Regional unis call for a fair evaluation
With regional unis working hard to support disadvantaged students, they fear a simplistic approach to funding reviews.
The six non-metropolitan universities in the Regional Universities Network have called on the Turnbull government to take a broad view of university performance in designing the next higher education funding scheme.
From 2020 the government, if re-elected, will make a portion of university funding contingent on performance and RUN universities fear their generally high student attrition rates will count against them.
A RUN-commissioned paper issued this week says high attrition rates at some universities must be seen in the context of those universities enrolling high numbers of students from so-called equity groups — that is, students who have disadvantages such as coming from rural or remote locations, having an indigenous background or coming from low socio-economic areas.
“To measure university performance on attrition and/or completion without accounting for equity group enrolments would punish the universities who have made the largest contribution towards expanding equity of access,” says the paper, prepared by consulting firm Nous Group.
RUN chairman Greg Hill, who is also vice-chancellor of the University of the Sunshine Coast, said “a narrow focus” on student attrition would not capture the expectations that the government and the community have for higher education.
The Nous report, titled A Performance Framework for Regional Universities, says student attrition and completion measures need to be weighted to take into account the number of equity group students that each university has enrolled.
It also says university performance should not be measured solely on dropout rates and employment outcomes for graduates. The government also should take into account levels of student satisfaction, employer satisfaction and rate of participation in higher education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. “Unless performance is carefully defined, there is a risk of rewarding the wrong behaviours and constraining innovation and opportunity for those students most in need of higher education,” Professor Hill said.
RUN is made up of Sunshine Coast, Southern Queensland, Central Queensland, Southern Cross, New England and Federation universities.
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