I have watched conditions at South Australian Universities slowly deteriorate over the last ten years. Being a member of the SA Branch Executive of the Australian Computer Society, I have been involved with students and staff in a number of events and projects, and seen these effects. But how to intelligently describe this?
Fortunately it has been done for me by Professor Vicki Sara, Chancellor UTS on the Science Show on ABC Radio National. What I was observing was real, not imagined.
“Vicki Sara points to a looming crisis in Australian universities as they lose their competitive position due to underfunding and over regulation. Other OECD countries have increased funding for higher education. Australia has seen a decline of 4%.”
Excuse me, what was that again?
” If I can just explain what the major underpinning problem is. Universities are funded both from the government and from the private purse. What has happened is that over the last decade there’s been a failure of care of the Australian university system so that there is an ever-increasing gap between the real cost of providing university education and the funding that the universities have achieved. Australia is the only country in the OECD where there has actually been a decrease in the investment by the government into higher education. If you look at the average, all of the other countries have increased their investment over the last decade by 49%, and Australia is the only country where there has been a decline of 4%.
What’s happened in Australia is that there has been a shifting of the cost from the public purse, there has been no increase in real terms in government funding of places at universities, and there’s been a shift over to students who are now paying double the cost for university education than they paid a decade ago. So, cost shifting over to the students and no real firm investment by the government into universities.
What this means is there is a gap between the cost of providing quality education and the funding received, and that gap is increasing all the time. How do we fill it? We fill it by cross-subsidising by fee-paying students on the one hand. The second cross-subsidisation comes from popular courses. It may come as a surprise to many people but popular courses like business and management are actually cross-subsidising courses in science and humanities.
And this situation cannot continue because the impact on the quality of the education all universities are able offer has deteriorated and is deteriorating. You can see it in a change in the staff-student ratios; a decade ago it was 14, today 19, where will it be tomorrow? If we cannot compete globally, we no longer are able to fill the gap that is existing in the current university system. I believe this to be a looming crisis for the future of this country.”
For the full transcript http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/2089488.htm#transcript
I am grateful for programs such as the Science Show that keep me informed on what’s happening in the real world.
PG
