Month: December 2022

Urban prospective students and regional student places: the Job-ready Graduates growth mismatch

Andrew Norton3 Comments

In an earlier post I looked at how Job-ready Graduates could produce fewer total student places than originally forecast. This post examines the geographic distribution of those places. Both posts draw on my first submission to the Universities Accord review.

Job-ready Graduates ‘growth’ funding is based on campus location (‘growth’ in quotation marks because it is off a reduced base). Regional campuses get 3.5 per cent annual funding growth, with 2.5 per cent for metropolitan campuses in high growth areas, and 1 per cent for other campuses. Higher growth rates for regional campuses reflect concern about lower university participation rates for people from regional areas.

Growth funding is for coming increases in the school leaver population, which will translate into increased demand for higher education. My submission uses 2021 Census data to see where the school leavers of the mid-2020s to 2030 are located, and how this aligns with higher education policy.

City/rest of state growth rates

Full regional classifications are not yet included in the publicly available 2021 Census data, so the chart below uses a greater capital city/rest of state classification. The age groups cover the young people who will finish Year 12 and seek university entry from mid-decade through to 2030. It compares their numbers to those of people the same age at the 2016 Census, who reached/will reach university age in the first half of the 2020s.

Overall the population of 9 to 16 year olds was in 2021 13.5 per cent higher than in 2016 in the greater capital city areas and 7.8 per cent higher in rest of state areas. Population growth is significant in both categories, but larger in the cities that will get a smaller funding increment.

The chart also shows variations by specific year of age, with growth rates most aligned in the 11-to-14-years age groups.

Note: Citizens only. Source: ABS Census 2016 and 2021, TableBuilder Pro
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Inflation and student places under Job-ready Graduates

Andrew NortonLeave a comment

Earlier this week I made my first submission to the Universities Accord review. One issue the submission covers is whether Job-ready Graduates policies can meet demand from the so-called Costello baby boom birth cohort. This post looks at how large variations in Commonwealth contribution rates and misaligned systems of indexation could affect overall growth in student places. A subsequent post looks at the geographic distribution of places.

The relative value of Commonwealth contributions

Job-ready Graduates combines a fixed maximum basic grant amount (MBGA) for higher education courses (all CSP coursework except medical places and places for regional Indigenous bachelor degree students) with Commonwealth contributions that vary between disciplines. The maximum funding a university can receive for higher education courses is the lesser of their full-time equivalent places delivered multiplied by the relevant Commonwealth contributions or the MBGA amount in its funding agreement.

This system creates trade-offs between opportunities for students, which are maximised by focusing on the courses with the lowest Commonwealth contributions, and meeting skills needs, with skills shortage occupations typically requiring graduates from courses with higher Commonwealth contributions.

Trade-offs were already a feature of the pre-JRG funding system, but JRG exacerbated them as the chart below shows. One new place in a funding cluster 4 course (medicine, dentistry, agriculture) costs 24.6 places in funding cluster 1 course (business, law, most humanities and social sciences). Under the pre-JRG system the highest funding cluster was 10.9 times the lowest funding cluster; still high, but a less extreme trade-off than under JRG.

We don’t yet have 2021 enrolment data to see where enrolments are moving by discipline. A move towards the higher Commonwealth contribution fields will consume more of the available funding, leaving less money to finance additional student places.

I don’t believe this is an immediate major issue. System capacity may be down on 2020 JRG projections but so is domestic demand, due to a strong labour market and flat or falling numbers of school leavers with an ATAR in the big states. But increased school leaver numbers due to a larger birth cohort will push demand up again in the mid-2020s.

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