Universities need regulatory consistency – Glyn Davis
[ UniNews Vol. 14, No. 5
4 - 18 April 2005 ] By Christina Buckridge
Public universities could be put at risk by a Commonwealth Government that “talks markets but prefers control”, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Glyn Davis, told the Australian Financial Review’s recent Higher Education Summit.
With private institutions set to move into the higher education industry, Professor Davis said a lack of “consistency of regulation” was the main risk to the public sector.
Noting the question of regulatory consistency was omitted from Minister Brendan Nelson’s Building University Diversity, Professor Davis called for “the silence in the Minister’s policy proposals, the unspoken agenda”, to become part of the diversity debate.
Professor Davis has no doubt that public universities will prove “nimble and remarkably responsive in a more competitive environment”.
“But to produce real efficiency gains in the public sector, ministers must surrender controls over management decisions,” he said.
Professor Davis believes private providers too would like to see a single, consistent regulatory framework and they already complain about intrusive course accreditation processes.
Public universities, he points out, accept obligations not imposed on the private sector, including issues of student access, teaching important but unprofitable disciplines, research and community outreach. Private universities may do some or all these things, but from choice rather than necessity.
“The public sector does not want to become residual, a second preference alternative to a private sector that accepts government money through deferred loan schemes and solicits capital grants during election campaigns, but avoids the costly imposition of government regulation.”
Professor Davis said the last barriers to full private participation in the large and growing university industry are the national MCEETYA protocols, a national agreement named after the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training, and Youth Affairs establishing rules, including a requirement for research, about which institutions can claim the title of university.
He believes the MCEETYA protocols are vulnerable to two lines of criticism: a number of accredited public universities own or are affiliated with teaching-only campuses, and five years after MCEETYA made research central to its definition of a university, research remains concentrated in a minority of public universities.
“Changes to the higher education sector, implemented in legislation from 1 January 2005, challenge the prevailing model of a university by extending a government-guaranteed income contingent loan scheme to students at institutions not entitled to be called a university.
“Some 30 private institutions have become eligible for FEE-HELP assistance, while only four private institutions won access to FEE-HELP’s predecessor loan scheme, PELS,” he says.
Professor Davis predicts that new players under a revised MCEETYA protocol will focus on corners of the market not occupied by existing public providers and the more successful ones will challenge existing institutions, particularly those with low public profiles and weak academic programs.
Likely profiles of new players are, he says, small, specialised and keen to leverage from the existing reputations of churches, industry groups or overseas universities.
“Perhaps they will resemble the most recent batch of private providers to secure access to FEE-HELP loans – the Blue Mountains International Hotel, the College of Law, the Southern School of Natural Therapies, the Sydney College of Divinity and the East Coast Gestalt Training Incorporated.”
A copy of the Vice-Chancellor’s paper is at: http://www.unimelb.edu.au/speeches
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