Australia’s education minister has promised to be “pragmatic” in his bid to get controversial funding reforms over the line, but maintains that the package of spending cuts and tuition fee increases will not damage universities’ teaching and research.

Higher education institutions remain strongly opposed to the Liberal-led administration’s plans to cut sector funding by 2.5 percent, slicing A$2.8 billion (Rs.14,274 crore) off campus budgets over four years, and to increase tuition fees by 7.5 percent. Their resistance has won them sympathisers in Australia’s Senate, where the government is struggling to win over the crossbenchers whose support is vital if the Bill is to pass.

But Simon Birmingham, the education minister, told Times Higher Education that he remains “hopeful” the legislation will get through. “Constructive and cordial” discussions are continuing, the minister said. 

Universities are pushing for the government to rethink its proposal to allocate 7.5 percent of sector funding on a performance-contingent basis, most likely judged on the sort of student outcomes used in the UK’s teaching excellence framework. Institutions are also fearful that if the government cannot win support for its higher education Bill, it will look to impose spending controls that don’t require parliamentary approval. On this point, Birmingham says the government is “not really thinking about alternative plans”.

Universities warn the cuts will force them to cut courses and research programmes and will imperil their global standing. There’s also concern about the potentially negative impact of the language used by Birmingham to describe higher education institutions, in particular his claim that higher education providers had been receiving “rivers of gold” from the taxpayer in recent years.

Birmingham told THE that he held Australia’s universities in “extraordinarily high regard”. “That doesn’t absolve universities, which are majority-funded and supported by taxpaying Australians, from being held to account for being as efficient as possible in terms of their use of public and student resources, and it doesn’t entitle people to a blank cheque of public funding,” he adds.

Birmingham describes comments such as his “rivers of gold” remarks as “rhetorical flourishes”.
 

(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)