There are dangers for both Labor and the Coalition on this high risk political strategy, but this is a problem of universities’ own amking. The elite Group of Eight campaigned so hard against quotas they gave the government no room for concessions.
The brutal truth is taxpayers will want a better case for stumping up more cash for degrees that do not qualify anybody for anything specific, other than being an academic.
They create markets too much like capitalism for those in academia who believe the role of government is to write the cheque and then leave universities alone – or ask hard questions about the quality and value for money of the courses they teach.
An arts degree will cost students just under $17,000 a year, which makes medicine and dentistry a bargain at $13,000. There are ways to address this, just not politically easy ones.
Our two oldest universities are both loudly left-wing campuses – they have activist staff and student groups where the party-line is settler-colonist theory – in which Israel as is has no right to exist.
The Victorian government will kick $5m to local universities to set up overseas and avoid Canberra’s international student quotas. Now why hasn’t anybody tried that before? They have and it doesn’t do much.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/stephen-matchett