A couple of opinion pieces about university performance funding last week suggested that the government’s policy is aimed at increasing student places with population growth. That may be the impression the government is trying to give, but their policy provides a financial incentive to decrease the number of student places.

The government’s promise is to increase nominal funding for bachelor-degree places in line with increases in the population aged 18-64, for those universities that meet performance targets. But because percentage population increases are likely to be below inflation,  total Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding will decrease in real terms each year, even if universities get 100 per cent of their performance funding.

Although maximum CGS payments will probably increase at less than the rate of inflation the underlying Commonwealth contributions are still being indexed to the CPI. As noted last week, the demand driven funding calculation is still going on as well, so that universities receive the lesser of their demand driven or maximum grant amount. The practical effect of this is that universities can decrease the number of Commonwealth supported places each year and still get their maximum CGS funding amount.

The chart below illustrates the logic, using nursing as an example. Under the Wellings review recommendations, universities are pretty-much guaranteed 60 per cent of their maximum performance funding. So on the left-hand side of the chart below I have indexed the maximum funding amount to that and divided it by the indexed Commonwealth contribution. Next year a university could offer 4 per cent fewer nursing places than in 2017 and still get its maximum funding amount. 100 per cent performance funding does not make much difference. Read More »