A PROMISE to increase funding for university places has earned the Australian Labor Party the admiration of La Trobe University.
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La Trobe vice-chancellor John Dewar said the university was heartened by the announcement, which was delivered as part of the federal opposition’s budget reply.
He said it was the first time Labor had unambiguously committed itself to reestablish the demand-driven system, if elected.
“The demand-driven system was designed to increase participation and absorb unmet demand for higher education,” Professor Dewar said.
“Its potential has not yet been fully realised - particularly in regional Australia.”
He interpreted the announcement as a promise to increase opportunities for regional students.
Professor Dewar said the federal government had “essentially applied the handbrake” to growth in the proportion of the regional population able to attend university – a move he said was “regrettable”.
“The funding cuts announced in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2017-18 are having a disproportionate impact on regional university campuses, which are more reliant on government support and have limited access to other sources of funding,” he said.
“Even worse, these cuts are curtailing our ability to continue to deliver the skills that regional employers and communities require, creating serious potential longer-term ramifications for our economic development.”
Professor Dewar said universities would be unable to increase the number of places they offer based on the existing arrangements.
“We’d relied upon that continued growth being available,” he said.
Education and Training Minister Simon Birmingham said universities still had options available to them.
“The Turnbull government’s plan to freeze just one stream of university funding for two years still means universities can enrol more students by making use of that 15 per cent teaching funding they appear to have been diverting,” he said in a statement.
“There is no reason that universities could not tap into that 15 per cent of funding and put on more classes or tutors and lecturers or grow enrolments in courses they see as having strong student demand or employment outcomes.”
Mr Birmingham said funding for higher education had grown at twice the rate of the economy since 2009, and would increase proportionate to the rate of population growth from 2020.
“Universities should be asking themselves what their spending priorities are if not to use the record funding we’ve been providing to best support their students,” he said.