Month: September 2020

What are the academic freedom laws that Pauline Hanson wants?

Andrew Norton1 Comment

As a condition of her vote for the Job-ready Graduates bill, One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson wants to add a new academic freedom provision to higher education legislation. According to yesterday’s media reports, the amendment would be in line with the wording recommended by the French review of freedom of speech in Australian higher education providers.

This change was already on the political agenda in early 2020, with consultations on the draft amendments. However, COVID-19 and perhaps Job-ready Graduates intervened and little has been heard of the issue recently, other than ex-Deakin VC Sally Walker being asked to look into implementation of the model code on university free speech proposed by Robert French.

I put in a submission to the legislation consultation, which recommended various amendments to the draft provisions, along with strengthening academic freedom to ensure that it was protected from government decisions.

This post is a slightly modified extract from the submission that explains the proposed amendments, with the aim of informing discussion if the Hanson amendment is introduced.

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The Job-ready Graduates student places debate

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Update 30/9: The minister has announced $326 million over an unspecified period, but starting in 2021, for additional student places. This would have a a significant effect on the calculations below. I will update again when I have more detail.

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One of the many disputed points in the Job-ready Graduates Senate inquiry was over the number of student places it would create. The Department of Education’s answers to questions on notice provided new detail, including annual estimates, shown in the chart below.

Over the longer-run, there are multiple mechanisms in JRG that could require or encourage universities to deliver more student places than now. However, the Department does not explain how it arrived at most of its numbers. They do explain the assumptions behind their 2021 forecast. For the reasons given below, I doubt that these justify a claim of additional places compared to status quo policies remaining in place.

Funding envelope

Of the 15,000 additional funded places, 7,000 are said to come from ‘increased flexibility for universities within the funding envelope’. This refers to ending three separate Commonwealth Grant Scheme grants for sub-bachelor, bachelor and postgraduate coursework places. Instead, universities would have a single ‘funding envelope’, within which they could freely move resources between qualification levels.

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Can enabling courses survive?

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Enabling courses are niche product of the Australian higher education system. Although quite diverse, they aim to improve academic preparedness for higher education study. Enabling courses often target general academic problems, but also discipline-specific gaps.

Public universities can offer enabling courses on a full-fee basis with a FEE-HELP loan, but most enabling students are in Commonwealth supported places they get for free. In 2018, universities had nearly 22,000 CSP enrolments, who used just under 12,000 EFTSL (most enabling courses are short).

CSP enabling places are funded from a mix of the normal discipline-based Commonwealth contribution and an ‘enabling loading’ in lieu of a student contribution. Both funding sources come from the Commonwealth Grant Scheme.

From 2011 to 2019, enabling places came from an allocation for sub-bachelor places, but with an implied enabling allocation, the set number of places that received the loading. The ‘fully-funded’ loading was about $3,400 per student place in 2018, but due to over-enrolments – students above the allocated number – it averaged about $2,700. This compares to a weighted average student contribution of $8,100 if these had been charged.

The government moves against enabling courses

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Job-ready Graduates: My Senate inquiry submission

Andrew Norton1 Comment

My submission to the Job-ready Graduates Senate inquiry is now on the Education and Employment Committee website, but the published version has an error in Table 5, so use this version instead if interested (update 16/9: correct version now on the Senate website).*

The submission does not have a lot in it that people who have read this blog since June will not have seen before. But the submission overview summarises what I see as the three key policy errors that make Job-ready Graduates not well designed to achieve its own objectives. I have copied it in below.

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What happens if the Job-ready Graduates bill is rejected?

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The Innovative Research Universities lobby group says that rejecting the Job-ready Graduates bill is ‘not an option’, while proposing several amendments to it. But its rejection by the Senate is still an option. What happens if it is rejected?

In this post, I argue that status quo policies can deliver similar outcomes in meeting student demand over the next few years, while causing much less disruption to the higher education sector.

Student places

The government says that it will ‘fund more bachelor‑level Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) at universities from 2021.’ Some universities will receive notional allocations, and regional Indigenous students will get demand driven places. But at a system level I don’t believe that direct Commonwealth funding will increase student places in the coming years, beyond what could be delivered under status quo policies.

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