Australian universities are pushing for the introduction of a Hecs-style loan system to cover “micro-credentials” to encourage people to upskill through short courses.
In its pre-budget submission, Universities Australia suggests loans for short courses in areas such as bushfire preparedness or digital health could make Australians more prepared for future crises, while also helping the university sector recover from years of lost revenue due to the pandemic.
It is one of 12 recommendations made by Universities Australia to the federal government ahead of Tuesday’s federal budget.
The peak body said that the higher education loan program (Help), formally known as Hecs, should be extended to cover “micro-credentials” – which are certifications that are not formal degrees or qualifications, but are still assessed and provide additional or complementary learning.
Universities Australia said that there was currently a financial barrier, especially for working Australians, to enrol in these courses.
“Australia’s existing financial incentives do not support workers that are facing time constraints to training or workers transitioning to new occupations. Prospective students who are time poor … currently have to pay upfront for non-award micro-credentials.
“To remove these financial barriers, the government should consider extending eligibility to access the Higher Education Loan Program to non-award micro-credentials … It improves affordability of education and training by removing the need for upfront payment of course fees.”
Examples of two micro-credentials that would be covered under the proposal are the Assessment of Bushfire Exposure at the University of Melbourne (which costs $1,490) and Fundamentals of Digital Health in Hospitals at Deakin University (which costs $1,909).
The chief executive of UA, Catriona Jackson, told Guardian Australia that the innovation and diversity of these micro-credentials made them “attractive to students”.
Public universities were excluded from jobkeeper during the pandemic, after the government made a series of rule changes to the program, and it is estimated that more than 17,000 people lost their jobs.
And controversial higher education reforms, known as Job Ready Graduates, reduced the overall funding for universities.
In their budget submission, the universities said it had “never been clearer”, during the bushfire and Covid crises, that government funding of research and experts was vital.
In their submission, the peak body also argued that the “reduction in funding per student place” as a result of the higher education reforms “puts additional pressure on the university sector already under very significant stress amid the closure of Australia’s international borders”.
UA is also asking the government to “increase long-term investment in university research” and to provide “adequate support for state and territory plans to bring international students back into Australia”.
Previously, the national president of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations, Errol Phuah, told Guardian Australia that the states and commonwealth were “blaming each other, no one is taking actual responsibility” on bringing students back.
The government gave universities an additional $1bn in research funding in 2020 to cope with the pandemic, but UA has asked for the government to increase its “long-term” research investment.
The universities are also asking for the government for more direct support to help them commercialise research, to open demand-driven places to all Indigenous students (when it currently only applies to regional and remote Indigenous students), and the continuation of student visa flexibility measures introduced during the pandemic.
The submission notes “a very small selection of examples” of how universities helped Australia during the bushfire and Covid-19 crises of 2020, including the University of South Austrailia and Flinders University helping to produce locally-made masks, and bushfire detection modelling created by the Australian National University.
“The availability of experts on the topics required to fight a pandemic did not happen by accident,” they said in their submission. “It is the result of long-term investment by government and universities across the full range of research disciplines.”
