ALP will tie university funding to community obligations

Labor will assess diversity and ­participation, community ­engagement and research excellence.

Margaret Gardner: ‘Opportunity is uneven within states.’ Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Federal Labor plans to use funding leverage to force universities to meet a range of community ­obligations, opposition deputy leader Tanya Plibersek will tell the Universities Australia conference tomorrow.

Ms Plibersek, who will address the conference after federal Education Minister Dan Tehan, will say Labor policy is to use funding agreements to ensure universities “operate as anchor institutions within their communities”.

She has previously warned that Labor was willing to use funding powers to make sure universities adequately addressed sexual assault and harassment issues and that they worked to improve teaching standards by recruiting student teachers from the top 30 per cent of school leavers.

But she will tell university leaders tomorrow that Labor, if it wins the election, is also willing to use funding powers to ensure universities contribute to social, cultural and economic development.

“The next round of funding agreements will be signed within the next term (of federal parliament) and, if I am the minister, I want to work with you to ensure those funding agreements clarify how universities are meeting community expectations,” Ms Plibersek, who is opposition education spokeswoman, will say.

Other areas in which Labor might use funding leverage to ensure outcomes are met include: local labour ­market needs; diversity and ­participation; community ­engagement; and research excellence.

Universities Australia will launch the conference today in Canberra with a new survey showing strong opposition by Australians to the funding cuts made to higher education in the past two years.

UA chairwoman Margaret Gardner will tell the National Press Club that 66 per cent of Australians oppose the federal government’s $328 million cuts to university research announced just before Christmas.

The survey, conducted by JWS research, also found 62 per cent of people oppose the measure announced by the federal government a year earlier, which ended the demand-driven funding system that previously gave universities a public subsidy for an unlimited number of students in most bachelor degrees.

In her speech Professor Gardner, vice-chancellor of Monash University, will say there will be cost to research and a cost to students, particularly those in under served parts of the country.

“Australians correctly fear that cuts to university research funding will mean fewer university researchers able to pursue life-saving and environment-saving breakthroughs,” she will say.

“Up to 500 fewer PhD scholarships will be funded this year alone. How will the next generation of brilliant researchers find their way to contribute?”

Professor Gardner will also make the point that, while more Australians now go to university than ever before, people in the smaller states are less likely to have a higher education, as are people from regional areas.

“A young person in Tasmania is half as likely to have a degree as a young person in the ACT,” she will say.

“Opportunity is also uneven within states.

“In Melbourne, university attainment is around 45 per cent.

“In Mildura, it is just 17 per cent.”

Profile of Australian students’ work integrated learning activities

Citing separate research commissioned for the conference, UA says nearly half a million university students are getting real world experience during their degree as part of a work placement, internship, fieldwork or work simulation.

Australian universities offered 555,000 individual work integrated learning activities in 2017, which benefited 451,000 students.

Of the number of activities, 43 per cent were work placements, 23 per cent were projects, 13 per cent were simulations and 10 per cent were fieldwork. The remainder was other types of work-based learning.

The UA conference will open this morning with a keynote address from French Higher Education, Research and Innovation Minister Frederique Vidal, in a sign of the increased research and industry links Australian universities have with France in the wake of the $50 billion deal for 12 submarines to be built in Adelaide.