Let’s put universities to the test

Degree completions are down and graduate job outcomes are weaker. Education Minister Simon Birmingham has seized on this fresh data to urge (autonomous but taxpayer-subsidised) universities “to take responsibility for the students they choose to enrol and ensure they have the capabilities and support to succeed”.

Who could disagree? Belinda Robinson, chief executive of the lobby Universities Australia, dismissed the minister’s remarks as “a Trojan horse for the government’s crusade to impose new conditions on university funding”.

True, it’s government policy to make some funding contingent on how universities perform, and obvious measures include course completions and job success rates. But performance funding is an idea implied by university rhetoric. Chided for their enthusiasm in enrolling large numbers of students with worryingly low Australian Tertiary Admission Ranks, universities protested they should be judged on outputs, not inputs. They insisted they were expert in drawing out the best from less promising students. In truth, universities oppose performance funding because they stand to lose money. The link between low ATARs and high dropout rates is proven. The incentives lead universities to take on students with too little thought for their academic or job prospects.

Performance measures would have to be tailored to the profile of institutions, taking into account the difference between, for example, the University of Melbourne with its talented school-leavers and the University of New England with its work-life challenged mature-age students. But the starting assumption has to be that institutions can lift their game. And many will need to be more discriminating at the point of entry, reinforcing what should be a wider message to students and parents that university is not for everyone.

As the sector has grown, it has been turning out more graduates destined for jobs that do not require their qualifications. It’s time to revitalise vocational and educational training, which has suffered from catastrophic policy errors and rorts. And it makes sense for universities to lift their standards and regroup; they will face more competition from quick, flexible and job-focused online courses.