The Universities Accord final report noted the problem of ‘no consolidated source of government expenditure by higher education provider and program (such as the Commonwealth Grant Scheme)’. It is one of the many reporting and data availability issues that make understanding Australia’s higher education system unnecessarily difficult.

CGS revenue by higher education provider

In January, after a laborious process of transcribing information from funding agreements, I published the ‘higher education courses’ and ‘designated courses’ funding allocations. To this I have now added funding determinations information on demand driven Indigenous funding, the medical student loading, estimated HECS-HELP lending as of May 2024 and estimated upfront student contributions, also of May 2024. You can download the spreadsheet here.

The chart below aggregates the programs into their two main categories, the CGS and student contributions, and ranks them from the largest recipient of funds, Monash University at $722.4 million, to the smallest, Charles Darwin University at $157.8 million.

Total sector revenue

Some figures are estimates as they are either paid on actual enrolments (HECS-HELP, upfront student contributions, Indigenous demand driven) or, in normal times, reduced if a university ‘under-enrols’, i.e. enrols students of a Commonwealth contribution value that is below the university’s allocated maximum amount. Universities may nevertheless be able to keep some money they would normally lose for 2024 due to under-enrolment. I discuss this workaround near the end of this blog post and in its links.

For general background on the CGS and its sub-programs, plus student contributions and HECS-HELP, see chapters 6 and 7 of my Mapping Australian higher education 2023.

With these caveats, universities and NUHEPs with Commonwealth-supported places (CSPs) will in 2024 receive $7.8 billion from the CGS, $5.3 billion via HECS-HELP, and $646.1 million in upfront student contributions, for a total of $13.76 billion.

As has often been the case through higher education funding history there are other programs with purposes that overlap with or run parallel to the CGS or HECS-HELP.

Before Job-ready Graduates the enabling loading ($38.1 million in 2024) and the regional loading ($86 million in 2024) were, under the funding legislation, part of the CGS. NPILF was funded with money cut from the CGS by Job-ready Graduates. It is worth $255.8 million in 2024. I have excluded all these programs from my totals.

On the loan scheme side, many CSP students use SA-HELP for the student amenities fee (estimated $124.2 million for 2024 including for non-CSP students), some use OS-HELP for overseas study (estimated $123.9 million in 2024). Maybe some students will borrow under START-UP HELP (estimated $6.1 million in 2024). I have excluded all these programs from my totals.

Student/Commonwealth funding split

The overall estimated public-private funding split for 2024 is 56.6% public and 43.4% private via student contributions and HECS-HELP. It should be noted however that the government actuary estimates that 15.4% of new debt won’t be repaid. That would put another $820 million on the public side, bringing it to 62.6% of the total.

Job-ready Graduates created more extreme differences in the course-level public-private split than previously. Nursing students pay less than 20% of the total funding rate of their course, compared to arts, law and business students who pay more than 90%. While I don’t think these differences are inherently significant, combined with the varying course profiles of universities they lead to very different levels of institutional reliance on CGS subsidies.

As the chart below shows, at the upper end James Cook University gets 70% of its CSP revenue from the CGS while at the lower end Macquarie University gets only 38%. If we ever start looking at HELP debt repayments levels by university the institutions on the right-hand side of the chart are going to look worse, because their students had to borrow so much in the first place.

Conclusion

Like the Universities Accord final report, my ill-fated demand driven review of a decade ago also recommended better reporting of funding and other data. But a decentralised funding system can still operate smoothly without the Department compiling reports. In a centrally planned system, such as that proposed by the Accord report and accepted by the government, proper reporting is essential.