University funding in need of resuscitation

CAPA applauds the fifth recommendation of the Senate Committee report, Universities in Crisis, that an urgent review be conducted into the most appropriate means to index university operating grants.

"The Senate committee's recognition that operating grant resuscitation is urgently required is a cause for enormous relief in higher education sector," said CAPA President John Byron today.

"Furthermore, the committee's acknowledgement that universities need sound, predictable and adequate indexing mechanisms in order to function dynamically is far-sighted and intelligent analysis.

"This contrasts starkly with the bloody-minded, myopic and parsimonious track record of Dr Kemp and the Howard government."

Universities have been starved of resources to fund basic and general activities under the Coalition. The capacity to fund reasonable pay increases, for instance, has been severely compromised by this government's unwillingness to support the expenditure of these public institutions.

"Salaries are not the only budget items that can be expected to grow over time," Mr Byron observed.
The cost of information technology systems, library resources, normal building and maintenance programmes, and routine administrative and logistical functions all continue to rise.

"And yet Dr Kemp refuses to offer universities any capacity to match projected revenue to forward estimates of expenditures, even against a background of increasing student numbers," he continued.

"One can only imagine what kind of havoc such a policy would play with the ability of government or the bureaucracy to function effectively from year to year.
There have been other serious repercussions.

"The government has cheerfully suggested that universities look to private sources of revenue to replace the growing shortfall in public funding," said Mr Byron.

"The inevitable consequence has been an increased reliance upon fee revenue, corporate partnership, and commercial adventurism, all of which bring with them serious risks for public institutions.

"The introduction of an intelligent, realistic, and reliable indexation strategy, then, is an absolutely basic commitment that must be made by any potential government who claims to have their health of our education system - and therefore Australia's future - at heart," Mr Byron observed.

"It is now to be hoped that a government is elected that is willing to implement this and all the other recommendations of this important inquiry," he concluded.