One of the most vocal supporters of university fee deregulation has called for a “depoliticised” review of higher education policy, saying it is not politically realistic to expect the government’s existing package to pass the parliament.
The Group of Eight (Go8) leading universities on Tuesday reaffirmed their support for the government’s reforms, after the Australian newspaper reported that the organisation had withdrawn its backing.
But the Go8 confirmed it had concerns over the compromises the government might accept in an attempt to win over crossbench senators, and suggested a review to scrutinise policy options.
“At the end of the day we [the Go8] have to be, we believe, political realists and recognise that there are no signals from the crossbenchers that they would support the current package,” the group’s chief executive, Vicki Thomson, told the ABC on Tuesday.
The education minister, Christopher Pyne, vowed to push ahead with attempts to remove limits on university fees, despite the Senate’s decision to block such legislation twice in the past four months.
“The Go8 supports the government’s reform proposals. Their own statement says so,” a spokesman for Pyne said.
“They agree that the sector has been overanalysed but make proposals about who could review it if another review was to be held. The sector has faced 33 reviews since 1950 and another review is not a substitute for action.
“The government does not plan another review. The government has the right policy for higher education and we will continue to press it.”
In a statement on Tuesday, the Go8 said the current funding model for universities was “broken” and the organisation had “consistently supported the proposal for the deregulation of higher education fees as the only long-term sustainable solution on offer”.
“In the absence of another solution the Go8 continues to maintain that view,” the statement said.
“However, the Senate has now twice voted down deregulation of fees while the funding crisis remains, and can only worsen with time. A solution therefore must be found if our students, and the nation, are not to suffer from the loss of quality this will create in both teaching and research.
“The Go8 is concerned that a number of other proposals being floated as solutions do not tackle the core issue of long-term funding satisfactorily.”
Pyne has previously signalled that he was prepared to consider proposals to structure commonwealth grant scheme funding to discourage excessive fee increases. The Hecs architect, Bruce Chapman, suggested tapered funding cuts whereby higher increases in fees would result in greater reductions in federal support.
Independent senator Nick Xenophon, who voted against the legislation, has repeatedly called for a root-and-branch review to resolve the standoff over higher education policy.
The Go8 said it would support a “depoliticised” review of teaching and research that involved “pre-eminent employer/business groups such as the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Minerals Council of Australia, together with the learned academies”.
“Such a review should consider our nation’s willingness to invest in research in ways that enable it to be undertaken without the current level of cross-subsidisation by teaching fees,” it said.
“A review of this type has the potential to illustrate for the public and our politicians in a much clearer way what currently faces our sector, and why.”
Opponents of fee deregulation seized on the initial reports that the Go8 had shifted its stance.
Labor’s higher education spokesman, Kim Carr, pointed to the article in the Australian as evidence that Pyne had “lost the strongest support he ever had for his unfair plans”.
“This is yet another embarrassing defeat for Christopher Pyne who has thrown Australian higher education into complete chaos through his sheer incompetence and short-sighted ideological agenda,” Carr said.
The National Tertiary Education Union’s president, Jeannie Rea, said Pyne had lost “his greatest cheerleaders” and should drop his “unprincipled” policy.”
It is time that university leaders and the minister accept that Senate’s refusal to pass the government’s higher education policy is because it is not supported by the majority of Australian voters,” she said.
Greens senator Lee Rhiannon said the Go8 should “accept much of the responsibility for the policy confusion on higher education that have put students and prospective students and their families under so much pressure”.
“It was their solid support that allowed minister Christopher Pyne to push ahead with his destructive plan for nearly 12 months,” she said.
The Go8 represents eight elite universities including the Australian National University, the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney. Universities Australia, the peak body representing the nation’s 39 universities, voiced support for “a short and engaged process of consultation to look at all the options”.
If universities are to continue to provide a high quality education for students, a stable long-term funding model is needed,” said the chief executive of Universities Australia, Belinda Robinson. “The bill has been defeated in the Senate twice, but the problem of underfunding will not go away.”
Tony Abbott said the government wanted to “liberate our universities from the shackles of bureaucracy” and the Go8 was criticising amendments pursued by the Senate crossbench. “I respect their right to be a very important part of the legislative process but it’s not the government’s fault when the Senate crossbench go off on all sorts of tangents,” the prime minister said.
The Coalition requires support from six of the eight crossbench senators to pass any legislation opposed by Labor and the Greens. The government’s Senate leader, Eric Abetz, said the “group of eight [crossbench senators] ought to deal with the Group of Eight from the universities sector” to try to find a solution.
