Government cuts uni places, funding

January 21, 1998
Issue 

By Marina Carman

The federal government has clearly signalled its intention of making 1998 a crucial year for its plans to restructure higher education.

The final report of the West review of higher education, due for release in March, will outline and sell the "vision" — of a fully deregulated education sector with universities free to charge their own levels of fees, with decreasing government funding and publicly funded places steadily replaced by full fee-paying places.

The detail is already being put into place. A government report leaked to the press on January 12, the Higher Education Funding Report 1998-2000, revealed explicit plans for further cuts in government spending and more student fees.

The report indicates a target of cutting government funding to universities to the equivalent of 50% of universities' total funds.

In 1983, the government provided 90% of university operating costs. After the Liberals cut $680 million in 1996, this went down to 60%. So much for Howard's pre-election promise not to cut higher education funding.

In order to make up funding, the report argues, universities will have to recruit a further 45,000 fee-paying students over the next three years — mostly overseas and postgraduate students, but a growing number of undergraduates as well.

When the Liberals announced their plans to allow universities to charge up-front fees for undergraduates in 1996, they argued that fee-paying students would get places above the already existing quota of government/HECS-funded students.

However, the trend is clearly for fee-paying students to displace other students, particularly in lucrative courses like medicine and veterinary science. The report admits that 4700 places have been lost since 1996 and a further 1700 will be lost over the next two years. Meanwhile the report projects a growth in fee-paying places of 5.6%, providing a 76% increase in revenue from fees.

Government and big business are waging an ideological battle to gain acceptance for the ideas of "user pays", of the need for "competition" and "efficiency", of turning universities into "businesses" and students into "consumers". The West review is another step in this direction.

University vice-chancellors have willingly enlisted in this battle. The projections for growth in fee-paying places included in the report were provided by the institutions themselves. And the VCs from elite institutions are screaming for more deregulation, hoping to widen the gap with smaller, regional and newer institutions, a gap which is already wide.

The University of Sydney, for example, has an operating revenue nearly 11 times that of Ballarat or Northern Territory universities.

But the government doesn't have it all its own way. The government is well aware of polls which show massive support for the maintenance or increasing of public higher education funding.

The Liberals hastily backed away from the "voucher" system of education funding suggested in the initial discussion paper of the West review late last year.

For students and staff, 1998 will be a crucial year, in which the movement needs to fight both the "detail" (the federal budget in May now looks likely to include further funding cuts, and VCs are busy nationwide trying to implement fees on a campus level) and the overall "vision" of a fully deregulated and increasingly privatised education sector.

At the national education conference in December 1997, Resistance put forward proposals for two national days of action, one in early April responding to the final West review report and one in early May before the federal budget.

The National Tertiary Education and Industry Union (NTEU) has indicated its willingness to organise a nationwide strike by academic and general staff alongside student action.

These ideas now need to put into place, dates set and plans organised for defeating the government's agenda.

[Marina Carman is vice-president of the Students Representative Council at the University of Sydney and a member of Resistance.]

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