In what is hopefully the beginning of a trend, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has shelved Tony Abbott’s planned deregulation of university funding. From The Canberra Times:
The Turnbull government has dropped its plan to allow universities to set their own fees from next year, and will go back to the drawing board on higher education reform.
Education and Training Minister Simon Birmingham will announce on Thursday that he will not reintroduce the government’s higher education bill into Parliament for another vote this year…
Former prime minister Tony Abbott immediately condemned the decision, saying he was “disappointed”…
Senator Birmingham’s predecessor Christopher Pyne had insisted the bill – which would deregulate university fees and cut course funding by 20 per cent – would be reintroduced this year after his reforms were twice knocked back by the Senate…
Good riddance, I say.
The OECD’s Education at a Glance Report, released last year, revealed that the public rate of return from higher education in Australia is around twice that of the individual, and that students in Australia already contribute far more towards the cost of their education – and receive far less individual benefit – than students across the OECD.
Therefore, rather than viewing university funding as being a “cost” to the taxpayer, it should be viewed as providing net benefits to society and a good taxpayer investment.
Furthermore, under the Abbott Government’s proposed reforms, the courses that would have been most affected are also the ones that provide the greatest social value (and smallest private benefits), such as teaching, nursing, or science.
University deregulation could, therefore, have encouraged students to shift from socially beneficial degrees to higher-earning programs such as commerce and law, with potentially deleterious outcome for society as a whole. Do do we really want more bankers and lawyers and fewer teachers, nurses and scientists?
The reforms would also have been particularly hard on women, who tend to repay their student loans over a longer period, along with lower-income earners, thus increasing inequality.
That said, as a compromise reform, there might be merit in the Coalition re-introducing caps on university places, ensuring access to university is based on merit. The previous Labor Government’s decision to uncap undergraduate numbers has not been matched by sustainable funding, and has also contributed to an oversupply of graduates in a number of areas.
