Dan Tehan’s funding shake up is worsening the crisis facing unis

Alison Barnes, national president of the National Tertiary Education Union. Photo: James Croucher

The federal government’s shake up of university funding will make the crisis engulfing higher education worse.

Since COVID-19 began, our universities have been devastated by a collapse in enrolment revenue of more than $4 billion. While some have tried to minimise the impact on research and learning by limiting job losses, others have been more concerned with preserving extravagant building programs. These institutions have coldly wielded the axe on hundreds of jobs at a time.

This has left us with a campus-by-campus hodgepodge of derailed careers and devastated livelihoods. The teaching capacity of many university departments has been utterly ransacked; research efforts lobotomised. The headline figures of approximately 3500 job losses are highly deceiving. Universities are overwhelmingly casualised and the number of insecurely employed people to lose their jobs already spans tens of thousands.

Yet as everyone looks to the government for a plan to stop Australian universities from sinking beneath the waves, the relevant minister seems intent on playing a diverting game of deckchair shuffle.

Instead of taking effective action to support embattled universities, Education Minister Dan Tehan has instead tried to manufacture a false battle between arts and science.

Unfortunately, the minister won’t even achieve his own stated aim of producing more science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates with his budget neutral plan.

In science and engineering, for example, student fees will decline by $2000 per year to $7700, but the Commonwealth contribution will fall by even more, at $2760 per student. This is a combined reduction of per-student revenue received by universities of 16 per cent in these disciplines. Universities also face the same level of per-student revenue decline in maths, where the increase in the Commonwealth contribution makes up less than half of the reduction in fees.

As respected voices such as Professor Richard Holden have warned, reducing the ticket price for students and simply asserting this will lead to more enrolments is poor policy. A more likely consequence is that universities will limit the now lower-revenue enrolments in STEM.

This will be especially pronounced in the non-Go8 universities that tend to lack the financial clout to take such a hit. So if the minister’s real intent is fewer STEM students, more concentrated in sandstone universities, he’s going about it the right way. If he really does want more STEM graduates, he’ll need greater per student Commonwealth funding.

The other noxious element of the minister’s package is the notion that arts and social science students are not productive or employable and should therefore leave university with double the debt.

Mr Tehan might consider visiting a women’s shelter and talking to its workforce and residents about the value of the service they provide. His changes will more than double the cost of a degree for people doing social work. But as we deal with the worst economic crisis since the second world war, social and community services will be more important than ever. So despite being designated as “very highly skilled” and in “very strong” demand by the Commonwealth the cost to become a qualified social worker will increase 113 per cent to $43,500.

Countless studies indicate the employability of arts and humanities graduates will increase as employers seek out students who can critically engage with dynamic problems. It prompted Business Council chief executive Jennifer Westacott to note: “21st century leaders need this humanities mindset. They need to understand the human condition. They need the qualities of critical thinking, synthesis, judgment and an understanding of ethical constructs ... We need our brightest kids studying the humanities.”

Yet it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mr Tehan is more interested in trolling university employees and students than fostering an economically and socially important sector. Fortunately the Australian parliament can still scotch his ill considered plan.

Dr Alison Barnes is national president of the National Tertiary Education Union.