All government-subsidised undergraduate science students to pay more

Posted by on May 9, 2012 4 comments

Rather surprisingly, last night’s budget was pain free for universities. But their students were not entirely spared. The previously announced decision to restore previous student contribution amounts for new science students was extended to include continuing science students.

While in my view the discount for science students should never have been offered, the change again highlights the problems caused by the instability of higher education policy, with constant introductions and withdrawals of incentive policies. DEST/DEEWR/DIISR incentive programs rely on the naivety of the punters to work, because anyone who observed this policy area over time would assume that incentive policies lack long-term credibility, and not change their behaviour.

(Of course prospective students are unlikely to follow this detail, so temporary discounts may work. Oddly, a couple of articles (here and here) in today’s budget coverage repeat the Ian Chubb/ government line on science – too little demand for science university places, too little supply of university places, and too few scientists. The evidence does not support any of these propositions. A 2012 report on university applications showed not only that for the third successive year science experienced very large increases in applications and offers, but that science was doing exceptionally well in the 90+ ATAR group. And the argument that we are short of science graduates is not evident in any employment survey.)

Junior economist jobs at the Grattan Institute

Posted by on April 20, 2012 1 comment

The Grattan Institute is advertising for junior economists to work as associates. The job involves working with a program director (me on higher education and my colleagues who run schools, cities, energy and productivity programs) on various projects. Associates rotate between programs, so there will be opportunities to learn about several areas.

Details here.

Where do journalism graduates work?

Posted by on April 18, 2012 No comments

The Higher Education Supplement this morning has a series of articles on journalism degrees. I did send some 2006 census statistics in, but they don’t seem to have made it to print.

The good news is that back then there were reasonably good rates of employment in professional and managerial jobs, 74% of bachelor graduates and 83% of masters or above graduates. However, only a minority of them were working as journalists, as seen in the figure below. Around 9 percentage points more were in related occupations such as PR or advertising (and there could be more working in the media industry, but in other roles).

I had a quick look at the broad fields of study of people working as journalists. A caveat here is that the census asks about the main field of study in the respondent’s highest qualification. Many people taking a postgraduate journalism qualification are likely to have a bachelor degree in some other field. With that caveat, the broad “creative arts” category that includes journalism courses is the field of study of nearly half of journalists, with “society and culture” (essentially humanities and social sciences, but also law and economics) providing more than a quarter of journalists with their education.

Bachelor degrees the science employment risk

Posted by on April 11, 2012 6 comments

The Higher Education Supplement this morning ran an op-ed version of my critique of Ian Chubb’s promotion of science courses. About 60 words were cut from the original. Editors often have to shrink articles to the available space, but in this case an important source was omitted. The employment outcomes in the last few paragraphs are from the 2006 census, not the Beyond Graduation survey as the op-ed appears to say. An amended version of the op-ed is under the fold.

Those paragraphs were the only part of the article that I had not reported before. In the past, I have said that science graduates as a whole have about average rates of graduate employment in professional and managerial jobs. However, closer analysis tells a more interesting story. People with postgraduate science qualifications have above rates of professional and managerial employment. But people with bachelor-level qualifications have lower rates of such employment – males 5 percentage points below the male average, and women a massive 13 percentage points below the female average. That’s a pretty bad outcome, and one worth further investigation when the 2011 census is released later this year.

———–
Read more »

The launch of My University

Posted by on April 3, 2012 2 comments

The government’s My University website launched this morning.

Overall, I think it is a good start in giving students more information to help with their higher education choices. There is information by university and field of study on student satisfaction with teaching and generic skills development, attrition rates, employment rates, staff qualifications, student:staff ratios, and other things. The meaning of these numbers is often contested – the methodology section suggests caution on some matters – but overall it is better than general impressions or historical reputation.

Here is an example of how the information is presented, for Macquarie University business.

There is also information on general campus facilities. Here is an example for Murdoch University.

Some suggestions for future versions of the site:

* How to get to the course performance information is not intuitive. ‘Course search’ will provide a list of courses in the field of study of interest, but the comparison tool only gives ATARs and cost. The latter will be useful if fees are deregulated, but under the current system the student contributions will be much the same. To find course performance information, users have to go to ‘university search’, and then choose the field of study. Comparison between universities will be difficult without printing out results for each university.

* For non-university higher education providers (NUHEPs), their courses can be located through ‘course search’ but not ‘university search’. No information on admission requirements or cost was in any of the results from random searches. Nor is there any information on course performance, though some NUHEPs are in the relevant surveys (there may be sample size issues). To get a proper market, we need to include the NUHEPs as fully as possible.

An electorate than thinks government does too much, except for all the areas in which it does too little

Posted by on April 2, 2012 2 comments

Today’s Essential Research poll highlights the perils of trying to draw any specific policy conclusions from public opinion on high-level questions.

First, its respondents were asked about the size of government, and the answer suggested that perhaps a large number of voters had suddenly converted to classical liberalism:

But more specific questions suggest that the vague feeling that governments are too big does not translate into wanting government to do less in key areas of activity. In every proposition put to the Essential respondents, a plurality wanted the government to do more, and in most clear majorities wanted the government to do more. The 44% of respondents who earlier in the survey had thought government did too much shrank to a constituency of between 1% and 10%.

This is why governments have so much trouble cutting spending, and why genuine ‘tough budgets’ are very rare.

The low employment relevance of science degrees

Posted by on April 1, 2012 7 comments

Back in February, Chief Scientist Ian Chubb used a report (pdf) on science enrolments to promote the view that we are producing too few science graduates. I disputed that claim.

The recently released Beyond Graduation 2011 report (pdf), of graduates three years out, provides further reason to be very cautious about science boosterism.

One question in the survey asks employed graduates whether their qualification was a formal requirement, important, somewhat important or not important for their job. The figure below shows that after three years those with science degrees are only just saved by the creative arts from having the qualifications least likely to be a formal requirement or important for their holder’s job.

As the text points out, many graduates who rate their degree as not important are in managerial or professional jobs. So the lack of direct relevance may not be a problem from their point of view. But that so many science graduates find employment where a science degree is not required hardly suggests general shortages of science qualifications.

Queensland Labor could protect its funding, but not its seats

Posted by on March 25, 2012 No comments

After yesterday’s disastrous electoral result, one decision of the former Queensland Labor government is looking good, at least from their perspective. This was the change to the public election campaign funding regime.

Previously Queensland, like other jurisdictions, had a pay-per-vote system of election public funding (about $1.65 per vote in the QLD case). In the reforms legislated last year, this was changed to a system of reimbursement, up to a maximum of about $5.3 million. The formula works like this:

All of the first 10% of electoral expenditure
75% of the next 80% of electoral expenditure
50% of the remaining 10% of electoral expenditure

I’m not sure how much Queensland Labor spent this time around, but presumably they will walk away with several million dollars in public funding, while the old system would have netted them $1.2 million on yesterday’s vote.

The main argument for the new system is that it introduces a counter-cyclical element to the system. With donations tending to follow popular support, parties on the downward part of their cycle are dealt a double blow. This system of public funding lets them mount a decent-sized campaign (I’m not sure how big the Queensland Greens or Katter Party campaigns were, but this system also helps small parties, provided they reach a 4% threshold).

However, as the NSW and QLD elections demonstrate there is only so much money can do. From a campaign finance theory perspective, each campaign was a fairer and more even contest than it might otherwise have been. But that did not stop two of the biggest defeats in Australian electoral history.

Should the government redistribute student fees between universities?

Posted by on March 22, 2012 No comments

In an AFR op-ed today (not behind a paywall – things are improving), Macquarie Uni VC Steve Schwartz suggests some egalitarianism for universities.

If fees are deregulated, the more prestigious universities would charge higher fees than others. Schwartz suggests that if they did, their government subsidy should be reduced, and redistributed to other universities.

The reason is regulatory – the new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency is imposing standards on all universities, but it is hard for the poorer universities to match the standards of the wealthier universities.

I doubt TEQSA will require all universities to be the same. A university licence to operate depends on meeting minimum standards, not being identical to all other universities. That said, there is a tendency in the standards released to date to codify common practices, some of which are of doubtful necessity. If this continues, the universities in the best financial position to try new things will tend to set the standards over the long term. Read more »

Department of Corrections

Posted by on March 18, 2012 No comments

For those who downloaded my Grattan report, Mapping Australian higher education, there was an error in table 8 on page 50 which lists funding rates for Commonwealth-supported places. The maths and science rates did not include $3,499 in transitional funding paid for students enrolled in 2009 or later, who paid a student contribution amount reduced by that amount. The correct numbers are in a revised version of the report.

Further complicating matters, these student contributions will be put back up next year, so assuming that the required legislation is passed future calculations should take this into account. Other than via indexation the total won’t be affected, but the student contribution will go up, and the Commonwealth contribution will go down.