15 November 2017

The future of the proposed higher education reforms remains uncertain, particularly as ongoing citizenship issues impact the stability of the critical Senate crossbench. Minister for Education Simon Birmingham has called on universities to take responsibility for the students that they enrol, highlighting newly released new attrition figures as evidence that performance-based funding should be legislated and suggesting that universities that recruited aggressively at the same time has increasing dropout rates would ‘have questions to answer’. Economist Ross Gittins has also criticised universities for poor performance in course completions, student satisfaction and graduate outcomes.

The Australian’s Tim Dodd reports that passing the legislation is low on the government’s priorities, suggesting that Minister Birmingham should instead consider options such as removing the research requirement for designation as a ‘university’. The IRU has also highlighted that the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook in late December represents possibly the government’s last opportunity to achieve relevant savings, arguing that a review of all tertiary education would be a ‘bearable’ outcome for universities but not for a government seeking change. In The Conversation, Southern Cross University’s Michael Whelan argues that the impacts of any cuts would be disproportionately felt in teaching rather than research operations of universities, predicting that universities will prioritise research performance over teaching-focused academics.

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A new report from TEQSA has highlighted that an increasing proportion of Australian university revenue was from international student fees, with international fees rising from 15 per cent in 2016 to 17 per cent of total university revenues in 2017 against a backdrop of decreasing government funding support. The report highlights that overall government funding has dropped from 45 per cent of total revenue in 2016 to 41 per cent in 2017, with two-thirds of total revenue growth for universities coming from international student fees. International student enrolments are once again up, with higher education international enrolments up 16 per cent on the same period last year. KPMG’s Julie Hare has argued that more needs to be done to ensure the international student boom is sustainable, highlighting that the concentration of international students in central Sydney and Melbourne places pressure on infrastructure, housing and the student experience.

In other international news, Macquarie University’s Philomena Leung highlights the need for greater policy coherence and a focus on innovation to combat increasing competition from China, noting significant Chinese government investment in international education partnerships and major shifts in Chinese pedagogy toward more creative thinking, gamification and virtual reality technologies.

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The Australian Government will now be linking enrolments data to Australian Tax Office records about occupation and income to provide prospective students with a better idea of the earning potential of particular study areas, with results to be published on the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching website in 2018. Higher education policy expert Andrew Norton has highlighted that the move will give the government greater insight into HELP debt and may potentially result in restriction of HELP access to courses with high rates of non-payment as the government will be able to identify ‘high-risk’ courses more easily.

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Victoria University has announced a plan to move the institution back into surplus through shifting resources from research to teaching, divesting courses, reducing student attrition and launching a First Year College, with VC Peter Dawkins indicating that the changes were expected to save the university $30 million in 2018. Other innovations include concentrating research in two key areas, abolishing large lectures for first year students and hiring 60 ‘academic teaching scholars’ to focus on teaching, although around 100 research and teaching academics will be made redundant under the new model.

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The University of Tasmania has announced its new Vice-Chancellor will be ethicist and philosopher Professor Rufus Black, currently the Master at Ormond College at the University of Melbourne and deputy Chancellor of Victoria University. Professor Black has had a wide and varied career as a management consultant, ordained minister, academic and public policy expert, with key achievements including co-founding the Wade Institute for Entrepreneurship at the University of Melbourne. Professor Black will commence in the role in March 2018 and will take over from outgoing VC Professor Peter Rathjen.

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