The Universities Accord Interim Report is a stepping stone in a policy process aiming to ‘drive lasting reform of Australia’s higher education system’. This Review is not the first, nor the last, to acknowledge that future demand will be higher than today, and recognise that widening participation necessitates enrolling students previously excluded from the system. The big question is one of who pays for this expansion. Too often the answer has been students. We need a better way.
The Accord’s “growth for skills through equity” restates Bradley’s 40/20 targets in word form, and echoes Dawkin’s aspiration of "long term expansion of higher education opportunities and greater equity of access”.
Higher education expansion confronts a challenge identified by Martin Trow in the seminal Problems in the Transition from Elite to Mass Participation. Higher education is expensive, and expansion at historic rates of funding places ‘intolerable burdens’ on public finances stretched by other legitimate demands.
The Accord’s projected doubling of places by 2050 and pursuit of equity group participation parity will impose a ‘burden’, but it is neither intolerable nor unachievable. The long-term trend is for higher rates of participation enabled by internationally distinctive hyper-incremental policy change. University public financing at any specific point has been insufficient to accommodate future demand, necessitating high rates of policy reform.
The Parliament’s lengthy chronology of the Higher Education Loan Program highlights that financing of additional places over recent decades has been achieved through a combination of increasing student contributions, and changing loan repayment rates and thresholds. Job Ready Graduates saw some students pay less, and others a lot more to support an increase in places, paralleling Dawkins’ user pays model, where income contingent loans enabled many more students to enrol at university.
Our policy discourse is usually concerned with ‘places’ and ‘contributions’ in the abstract, failing to fully appreciate the individual student perspective. The obscure Dodwell Scholarship Case provides individual level insights into the financing of Australian higher education, with enduring lessons relevant to the Accord and beyond.
In 1881 Charles Seymour Dodwell was one of three Tasmanians who passed the Yearly Examination but, as the lowest ranked of the three, was not awarded one of the two scholarships available to study at a United Kingdom university. After much correspondence, including questioning the legitimacy of other scholarship recipients, specific legislation was enacted to award Charles Dodwell funds equivalent to the value of an additional scholarship.
There is laudable transparency in our public policy processes that allows ready access to correspondence in the Dodwell case and Universities Accord submissions. Whilst separated by over 140 years, both processes demonstrate divergent expert opinion on the merits of financing an additional place/s. Technical analysis of policy and its implementation also abounds, losing sight of big picture questions of how long-term demand for places can be sustainably financed.
The Accord Panel will soon deliver a final report with policy recommendations, refined in response to diverse individual and institutional responses. The Government will then need to legislate its response. The Commonwealth has already moved to replace 50% pass rate requirements with new regulations mandating a student support policy.
We may celebrate the repeal of one policy to bemoan the introduction of another, and another, and another. The Higher Education Support Act has already been amended five times in 2023, a little ahead of the long term average, and we are just getting started in legislating Accord recommendations!
It is difficult to see that system growth can be financed without some combination of: a cost shift to students; additional taxes; reallocation of resources; and/or, a reduction in per capita funding rates. None of these will be welcomed with open arms, and even with the best of policy intentions, we may see sound policy ideas transmogrified by parliamentary horse trading into policy incoherence.
No matter what flows from the Accord, we are likely to see continued long-term growth in participation and frequent policy change. As staff committed to teaching and learning, we should contribute to workable policy solutions where we can. But we should not lose sight of the primary role we play in ensuring that the Charles Dodwells of today and tomorrow will be exposed to a transformative higher education experience.
Dr Matt Brett, Director of Academic Governance and Standards, Office of the Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic, Deakin University