Abbott to Turnbull Ch 10

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221 W ithin weeks of election in September 2013 the Abbott government launched processes of review designed to inform the government’s first budget, including commitments to education. In part consistent with, but also departing from the outcomes of these reviews and the anticipated timelines for major change, the 2014 Budget became the Abbott government’s vehicle for announcing a package of radical changes to potentially deregulate higher education in Australia. Education commentator, Dr Gavin Moodie, astutely observed at the time that ‘If the government can get its proposals past the Senate, Australia will run an unprecedented experiment in fee and place deregulation with few constraints and little direct experience to inform policy analysis and institutional strategy’ (Moodie 2014). Moodie identified the three most significant changes proposed as: extending the demand driven system to all providers of all higher education qualifications; removing caps on student fees; and introducing fees for research higher degrees. He might also have added proposed changes to interest rates on tuition debt, a component of the proposed reform package that was later amended, but only aſter considerable political capital had been lost. This chapter focuses on the background, impact and media critique of this major higher education policy reform agenda but also draws on parallel developments in schooling policy where relevant. Chapter 10 Education policy: from bipartisan promises to radical agendas Sharon Bell and Belinda Probert

Transcript of Abbott to Turnbull Ch 10

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Within weeks of election in September 2013 the Abbott government launched processes of review designed to inform the government’s

first budget, including commitments to education. In part consistent with, but also departing from the outcomes of these reviews and the anticipated timelines for major change, the 2014 Budget became the Abbott government’s vehicle for announcing a package of radical changes to potentially deregulate higher education in Australia. Education commentator, Dr Gavin Moodie, astutely observed at the time that ‘If the government can get its proposals past the Senate, Australia will run an unprecedented experiment in fee and place deregulation with few constraints and little direct experience to inform policy analysis and institutional strategy’ (Moodie 2014). Moodie identified the three most significant changes proposed as: extending the demand driven system to all providers of all higher education qualifications; removing caps on student fees; and introducing fees for research higher degrees. He might also have added proposed changes to interest rates on tuition debt, a component of the proposed reform package that was later amended, but only after considerable political capital had been lost.

This chapter focuses on the background, impact and media critique of this major higher education policy reform agenda but also draws on parallel developments in schooling policy where relevant.

Chapter 10Education policy: from bipartisan

promises to radical agendas Sharon Bell and Belinda Probert

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A program for reforming education

Following the budget announcements, the Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne explained why major reform of higher education was necessary. He argued for the need for a reform package to ‘spread opportunity’ and ‘stay competitive’ in a context of ‘cut-throat’ international competition and ‘disruptive technologies’. The Minister reiterated the aspiration for Australia to ‘create some of the best universities in the world and the best higher education system in the world’ generating skills and knowledge for the ‘jobs of the future’. He presented a stark challenge: ‘either we spread access to higher education to more Australians and keep our country competitive with others in our region, or we support a higher education system that is unsustainable, that will decline into mediocrity, and eventually be left behind.’ The Minister argued that it would be irresponsible and cowardly of him not to act as the higher education and research system was widely acknowledged as ‘unsustainable in its current form’ and he called on the Senate cross-benchers’ support in addressing the emergent challenges (Pyne 2014a, 1).

Students were identified by Pyne as beneficiaries of proposed reforms, with an estimated 80 000 more students each year to be able to access commonwealth support under the proposed changes. ‘Innovative partnerships’ would increase ‘lower cost opportunities’ for rural, regional and outer metropolitan students and students from disadvantaged backgrounds would have access to a new Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme, with ‘individual packages’ to meet their needs (Pyne 2014a, 5).

But for students there was a sting in the tail. The Minister foreshadowed a significant shift in graduate contributions, from approximately 40 to 50 percent noting the significant, private benefits of higher education such as higher levels of employment, higher average earnings, better health and greater longevity (Pyne 2014a, 2). The government also proposed to cut research training funding and allow introduction of charges for research degrees, initially at a modest level. Although the proposed research degree

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fees were modest they marked a change in conceptualisation of research student status and contribution. Students undertaking research degrees have long been acknowledged as not just engaged in learning/developing the skills and knowledge of professional independent researchers, but also as essential contributors to, if not the powerhouse of, Australia’s research system (CAPA 2008, 8).

The Minister also presented the case for the extension of support for students studying for higher education qualifications at TAFEs and private educational institutions. This also applied to those studying for sub-bachelor qualifications (diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degrees) and those undertaking pathway programs to higher education (Pyne 2014a, 3).

Pyne cited support for the deregulation proposals from a ‘raft of university leaders’ in order to ‘free our universities to meet the challenges of the 21st century’ (Pyne 2014a, 4). Institutional freedom was a centerpiece of the reform package: freedom to respond to the changing environment; freedom to operate in the modern world economy without unnecessary constraints; freedom to work to institutional strengths; and freedom to position themselves. Universities would be free to decide what they offer, what fees they charge, which students they aim to attract, what teaching methods they use, what scholarships they provide, and what support services they offer (Pyne 2014a, 1–6).

In addition to freedom and institutional autonomy, central to Pyne’s agenda was to ensure that the recently introduced Demand Driven System1 that lifted previously imposed limits on the funding of bachelor-degree students at public universities, did not ‘lower standards’. For this he cited similar concerns expressed by Australia’s longest serving conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, notably from times characterised by a small, highly selective and elite higher education system2. Prior to the 2014 Budget announcements, the Minister also spent a great deal of time apparently looking backwards in acknowledging Menzies as the ‘father of modern higher education in Australia’ and drawing comparisons with Menzies’ achievements and the task ahead

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in terms of growth of the sector, standards and institutional freedom. Much of this was repeated in the Second Reading Speech of the Higher Education and Reform Amendment Bill (Pyne 2014b, 2014c). But Pyne was not looking to reproduce the past. As the 2014 Budget announcements were to reveal, the Minister was about to pursue ‘new frontiers’ and embark on a free market reform agenda with no historical precedent in higher education in Australia.

To aid his reform task, Pyne was arguably operating in a highly developed policy environment and this, together with a pessimistic outlook in relation to any possible increases in government funding, undoubtedly influenced the initial positioning of many vice-chancellors. As public debate gained momentum the imperatives were cogently summarised by Vice Chancellor Glyn Davis (2015) who noted that since the mid-70s all recent governments had cut university funding per student in real terms but the public perception remained that universities are adequately funded and, due to growth of the sector, governments are able to point to growing overall public expenditure on tertiary education.

It was not just in higher education but in all levels of education that the Abbott government commenced with a potentially strong policy framework. At the school level, after several decades on the agenda, a National Curriculum had been agreed with the first stages to commence in 2013 alongside a National Plan for School Improvement (NPSI) grounded in the Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling (2011) which addressed performance issues, particularly for the lowest performing students, and proposed an equitable school funding system. In higher education, the framework for development of a coherent and sustainable tertiary education system was set by the Bradley Review (2008), and the Base Funding Review (Lomax-Smith 2011) that arose as a recommendation from the Bradley Review. However, both Labor and Coalition governments were faced with significant and systemic funding challenges.

The fiscal challenge has been a dominant feature of policy debates. The expectation of significantly increased participation in tertiary education was a key, and widely accepted, outcome of the 2008 Bradley Review, which referenced 50 percent targets for participation in higher education in OECD countries.

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The target set for Australia was 40 percent of 25–34 year olds and twenty percent of students from disadvantaged groups by 2020 (Bradley et al., xi, xvii). The ensuing ‘demand driven system’, formally introduced in 2012 but pre-empted by many tertiary institutions, was immediately successful in increasing student numbers with every public university in Australia increasing the number of commonwealth supported students between 2009 and 2012 (Kemp and Norton 2014, ix).

The previous Rudd and Gillard Labor governments had left a legacy of very thorough policy reviews that had been generated through significant sectoral and community consultation and input. Their legacy was an evidence-based policy framework coupled with high levels of negotiated support by the states and key stakeholders but with significant funding and implementation challenges. It was already apparent in the 2013 Labor Budget that higher education was to take heavy cuts (an efficiency dividend for university funding of two percent in 2014 and 1.25 percent in 2015), in part at least to help cover the costs of the government’s Gonski school funding plan (Grattan 2013).

The role of the Base Funding Review, commissioned under the Gillard government was to ‘establish enduring principles to underpin public investment in higher education’ and to address ‘the appropriate balance between public and private contributions towards the costs of undergraduate and postgraduate education’ in the context of the change from a capped allocation system, concomitant rapid growth in higher education attainment rates and improved enrolment rates of those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Review concluded that there was a demonstrated need to increase the base funding per place to improve the quality of higher education teaching and address areas of underfunding in a suite of identified disciplines. The Review also recommended that the balance of student and government contributions should be set at the 40:60 ratios for each commonwealth supported place (Lomax-Smith et al. 2011).

There were also a number of highly relevant specialist reviews to inform government policy, such as the Knight Review of the Student Visa Program

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(Knight 2011), Professor Kwong Lee Dow’s Review of Student Income Support Reforms (Dow 2011) and the Behrendt Review (2012) that set clear blueprints for the future of Indigenous access and outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in higher education.

It was the Bradley and Gonski reviews that set the benchmarks for Australia’s evolving education system—a system that has been characterised by ‘fair and inclusive practices that strive for equity, quality and high completion rates for upper secondar y and tertiar y education (OECD 2013, 4). Both were ver y thorough policy reviews with an unusually high level of support of all major stakeholders but both involved a significant focus on equity and expansion, and required significant additional investment. The Gillard government was already perceived to have privileged the school reform agenda over higher education funding.

By 2013 in higher education Australia was grappling with both short term funding issues in the context of balancing the budget and issues similar to those emerging throughout the OECD—the expectation and need to support ‘lifelong learning’ not just for a minority/elite but through the development of a universal higher education system (Trow 2007). This was coupled with an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the importance of early childhood education and the early and formative years of schooling (COAG 2009, 4). Schools policy had long been recognised as politically pressing, and although a state rather than commonwealth responsibility, there was ample opportunity for the federal government to intervene and shape school policy, especially when using a funding package to leverage change3.

From the time of the release of the Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling, the Coalition had been opposed to the new funding model. In pre-election mode then education spokesperson Christopher Pyne had been an outspoken critic of the Gonski funding model. But on the eve of the 2013 election, Abbott announced that ‘As far as school funding is concerned Kevin Rudd and I are on a unity ticket’ promising the same increase as Labor in school funding over the next four years. It was a promise that turned out to be short lived (Allard 2013).

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A similarly benign position was presented to the sector in relation to higher education. Prior to his election, Tony Abbott drew on the Menzies tradition and values later embraced with such enthusiasm by Minister Pyne: institutional autonomy, academic freedom including the freedom to speak ‘truth to power’, the role of universities to produce excellent graduates, leaders and future professionals. At least one university commentator was tempted to conclude ‘he gets it’ (Sharrock 2013). In the context of fiscal constraint and responsible budget management, Abbott promised no substantial new funding but also no substantial funding cuts or major policy changes. He indicated that universities needed time to adjust to the impact of the demand driven system introduced the previous year. He spoke of a ‘hands-off ’ approach to the higher education sector saying ‘There is little that government can contribute except interference. Higher education is one area where government’s role is more to be a respectful listener than a hands on manager’ (Hurst 2013). In a reassuring move for many, Abbott emphasised the need for policy stability and his desire to build on the sector’s success, particularly in international education. He did however flag, in a move that became more significant over the ensuing months, that if the Coalition were elected they would not take up the key recommendation of the Base Funding Review to increase base funding to the higher education sector. He did not couple this position with plans to deregulate domestic student fees.

The dramatic shift from the pre-election promises of Abbott and Pyne, broadly the ‘unity ticket’ on school education and a ‘hands-off ’ approach in higher education, to the deregulation of higher education articulated in the May 2014 Budget followed by a retraction from Gonski funding and recommendations, together with a review of the National Curriculum for schools, raises the question of ‘what changed’? What were the drivers for radical departures from established policy and highly regarded review recommendations? Why embark on a toxic political move that has generated heated debate, student protests, institutional uncertainty, community anxiety over costs and quality of education, research sustainability and policy paralysis for over two years.4

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Pressing imperatives

A key plank of the Abbott government’s election campaign was the capacity to bring the national budget back into surplus (Liberal Party of Australia 2013, 16–17). To inform the Coalition’s 2014 Budget, a National Commission of Audit (NCOA) was formed on 22 October 2013 to review and report on the performance, functions and roles of the commonwealth government, and make recommendations to return the budget to a sustainable surplus of one percent of GDP prior to 2023–24.

The NCOA was headed by Tony Shepherd, former Business Council of Australia (BCA) president, in which role he had been openly critical of previous Labor government policies including the Gonski schools funding reforms (Wright 2014). The NCOA made 86 recommendations in its reports (February and March 2014) and proposed sweeping spending cuts for government consideration, many of which were relevant to education and are outlined below.

Schools funding

The NCOA recommended changing funding arrangements to simplify commonwealth-state responsibilities and make school funding more affordable by transferring all policy and funding responsibility for government and non-government schools to the states, with annual funding provided in three separate, non-transferrable pools—one each for government schools, Catholic schools and Independent schools. It also concluded that the growth in commonwealth funding of schools, attendant upon the implementation of the Gonski reforms, was not sufficiently justified. With these reforms the NCOA proposed significantly reducing the size of the Commonwealth Department of Education (NCOA 2014, 124–7).

Higher education

The NCOA recommended a number of changes be made to existing arrangements to ‘better account for the private benefits of higher education and improve performance of the sector’ including decreasing the average

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proportion of higher education costs paid by the commonwealth through the Commonwealth Grants Scheme from 59 percent to 45 percent and increasing the average proportion of costs paid by students from 41 percent to 55 percent; tasking the Minister for Education with developing options to increase competition in Australia’s education system through a partial or full deregulation of fees for bachelor degrees; and reducing the cost to the commonwealth of the Higher Education Loan Programme (HELP) by increasing the interest rate applying to HELP loans from the current rate (equal to movements in the CPI) to a rate which reflects the full cost to the commonwealth of making the loan and reducing the threshold for HELP repayment from $51 309 per year to the minimum wage of $32 354 (NCOA 2014, 153–7). The NCOA reported that ‘A number of universities made submissions with the Commission proposing the complete uncapping of fees’ (NCOA 2014, 154).

Research

The NCOA recommended the government take a more strategic, whole-of-government approach to the funding of research and development, including by abolishing sector-specific research and development programs; aligning the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council grant processes; streamlining the current system of research block grants and postgraduate scholarships and looking at options for better aligning funding for the direct and indirect costs of research; and allowing for more government oversight of the work of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation to ensure that resources are being directed to areas of greatest priority (NCOA 2014, 168–72).

A month after assembling the Commission of National Audit, the Abbott government also commissioned a Review of the Demand Driven Funding System to ‘recommend possible areas for improvement to ensure that the system better meets its objectives, is efficient, is fiscally sustainable, and supports innovation and competition in education delivery’ (Kemp and Norton 2014, 81).

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The report examined the impact of the system on the quality of teaching and future graduates and whether quality was being maintained, especially for less academically well-prepared students. Overall the report documented the success of the demand driven system and should have alleviated Minister Pyne’s concerns about quality and innovation in a significantly expanding sector. The reviewers noted that almost all submissions to the review supported the continuation of the demand driven system. Access was found to be improved for students from all categories, including students from major cities, rural and remote areas, all socio-economic backgrounds and Indigenous students. Innovation, teaching quality and student satisfaction also improved and the early evidence suggested the system seemed to be adapting more to skills shortages (Kemp and Norton 2014, xiii). The review generated a number of influential recommendations. It proposed extending the system to all approved higher education providers and sub-bachelor higher education courses. Recognising the financial pressures on government that the Review findings generated, the reviewers recommended, consistent with the NCOA, adjusting the commonwealth place subsidy and student contributions, together with the introduction of a HELP loan fee (Kemp and Norton 2014, xiv).

In light of the failure of the higher education reform package in the Senate, Pyne emphasised that ‘ The truth is that fee flexibility is the only way that Australia will be able to achieve a world class higher education system—one that caters to the growing and increasingly diverse student population and is characterised by excellence in teaching and research’ (Pyne 2015).

Pyne did not make reference to the fact that a partial or full deregulation of fees for bachelor degrees was a recommendation of the NCOA nor did he attempt to reconcile the fact that this was not a recommendation consistent with the Demand Driven Funding Review. In fact, the Commission of Audit explicitly referenced the Demand Driven Funding Review in relation to this recommendation on deregulation, recommending a twelve-month reporting period for the Minister (NCOA 2014, 157).

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But the government was impatient to prosecute the deregulation agenda and instead used the 2014 Budget as the vehicle for so doing. Why did the Minister so radically depart from the Demand Driven Funding Review’s recommendations and why did he act with such haste to move to deregulation of the sector?

First, despite student protests and increasingly vociferous opposition by university staff, the Minister enjoyed the unfailing support of Universities Australia ‘the voice of Australia’s universities’5 . This was frequently misleadingly reported in the media as the ‘sector’s support’ when in reality it was a position supported by the majority of vice-chancellors who on this issue stood apart from their constituencies6 . The vice-chancellors’ support was a powerful impetus for attempting to push the reforms through quickly and continued until the bill was defeated for the second time in the Senate. Although the incoming Chair of Universities Australia clearly signaled a more considered sectoral position on deregulation7 it was not until the end of March 2015, when the powerful Group of Eight universities withdrew their support, that a changed position was absolutely clear (Hare and Trounsen 2015).

Second, while addressing the budget deficit was a clear priority, the Abbott government’s broad agenda may also have been strongly influenced by well informed and influential bureaucrats and aligned with the conservative right. A persistent theme in Pyne’s rhetoric, and one that goes hand in hand with the imperative to deregulate fees, was the risk that Australia was falling behind the rest of the world in developing a ‘world class system.’ This was a well-developed theme of Pyne’s senior adviser on higher education, Dr Don Markwell, who has argued for over a decade that ‘there is a need for radical change if Australian universities are not to fall further and further behind the world’s best’8.

Add to the policy mix, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) a free market think tank ‘dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of economic and political freedom’, outlined an agenda, provocatively titled Be like Gough: 75 Radical Ideas to transform Australia for Tony Abbott to

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‘secure his place in histor y’ as a transformative (potential) Prime Minister. Tony Abbott had publicly acknowledged this agenda as aligned with his own thinking, with ‘a big yes to many of the 75 specific policies you urged on me’. Of the ‘75 Radical Ideas to transform Australia’, and the additional 25 proposed later, eight proposed reforms focused on educational and research reform, including ‘fee competition’ in higher education (IPA 2012). Fig 10.1

Source: Pope, The Canberra Times, 23 June 2016.

Policy failure

For Abbott and Pyne, neo-liberal agendas were one component of a toxic combination of fiscal and ideological imperatives that they doggedly pursued despite growing public concern and political opposition in a highly flawed public policy process. They had failed to flag their intention to make major policy and funding changes to either higher education or to schooling before the election. They established a National Commission of Audit with a composition that called in to question its ‘independence’ and provided an impossibly short time frame for reporting given the scope of savings

Source: Pope, The Canberra Times, 23 June 2016.

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targeted. They commissioned the Review of the Demand Driven System but with narrow terms of reference and again with an impossibly short timeline. They prematurely piled big structural reforms in to the budget without an appropriate consultative process that would have generated expert scrutiny and greater public understanding, perhaps avoiding some of the important ‘unintended consequences’ of proposed educational reform, in particular those that would impact disproportionately on equity groups in higher education and on disadvantaged schools.

The Greens, the National Tertiary Education Union and NATSEM (the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra) all published models and calculators of likely fees and debts for higher education courses within a month of the budget announcements. NATSEM’s modelling used a range of different fee scenarios and showed that in spite of the likelihood of large fee increases and longer repayment times the payoff from university degrees should be expected to remain higher than the costs—an individual dividend in lifetime earnings of around $1.5 million. But this lifetime advantage could not be expected to accrue to all, particularly for those with degrees with lower income profiles, such as teaching and nursing (mostly females), and for parents (mostly females) who reduce their employment while looking after children (Phillips 2014).

Excellence and equity

Remembering Pyne’s stark challenge ‘either we spread access to higher education to more Australians and keep our country competitive with others in our region, or we support a higher education system that is unsustainable, that will decline into mediocrity, and eventually be left behind,’ one of the most significant issues emerging from this period of attempted education reform is the interpretation that attaches to a system characterised by excellence and equity, differentiation of the student experience and institutional autonomy.

Abbott and Pyne’s deference to Menzies in this context is instructive, and may suggest that during this period critical aspects of the proposed

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reforms were obfuscated. Whilst Menzies did have oversight of a significantly expanded higher education sector it is misleading to assume that this was a relevant point of reference for the current expansion under universal higher education. During the Menzies era the sector expanded from a tiny base— 14 000 or 0.2 percent of the population in 1939. This phase of growth was based on post-war participation of ex-servicemen and participation of a greater number of students of the highest academic calibre through the introduction of the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme in 1951.

The rhetoric drawn from Menzies regarding institutional autonomy, academic freedom including the freedom to speak ‘truth to power’, the role of universities to produce excellent graduates, leaders and future professionals is language that sits comfortably, not just with Australia’s most elite educational institutions, but with the values and aspirations of the sector as it is currently constructed. It is dependent on mature organisations that have the trust of their communities to deliver not just highly skilled graduates and economically appropriate outcomes, but socially and culturally critical outcomes, particularly in outer-metropolitan, rural and remote areas. Universities as we know them are characterised by greater longevity and stability than many other organisations, and historically also by a level of employment security that underpinned both ‘academic freedom’ and critical external relationship building. But the reform agenda as proposed would see a much wider range of institutions and organisations offering higher education qualifications at much lower costs, driven by the profit motive and returns to shareholders and, if the experience in the recently reformed VET sector is indicative, with far less stability and questionable quality, both of which impact on value to students. The imperative to lower costs goes hand in hand with high levels of casual labour and employment insecurity and decreased capacity to engage with communities.

It should not be forgotten that the response to growth in the higher education sector in the 1960s was the establishment of colleges of advanced education (CAEs) as a ‘second tier’ of higher education, in large part to save money as there was no expectation that CAEs would conduct research.

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This two-tier system, which Abbott and Pyne only implicitly reference, was created by the Menzies government on the advice of the Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia9. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the Abbott-Pyne vision for Australian higher education system was to develop, not a public two tiered system but a differentiated system characterised by free market competition and significant growth through a range of private providers. This would have been an ideologically attractive option and would have helped address the fiscal challenges posed by growth in the sector. It would have also potentially enabled government resources to be increasingly concentrated in research intensive universities, enabling some to be ‘amongst the best in the world’ but with a constriction of opportunities for the less privileged and a shift of resources to the more privileged.

A number of commentators suggested that increased structural inequality was a likely scenario. Simon Marginson, Professor of International Higher Education at University College London noted that if the Senate passed the package in the budget, the Abbott government would have destroyed the predominantly public settings of the present system (Marginson 2014). Gavin Moodie argued that ‘The result will not be the two-tiered system of institutions that students are protesting against, and still less the different categories of institutions that some still seek, but a more explicit, ordered and steeper hierarchy of institutions by fees and hence funding, research, status and elitism’ (Moodie 2014). In a similar vein, Professor Stephen Parker, then Vice Chancellor of the University of Canberra, became the only vice chancellor to consistently and publicly decry the proposed reforms as he deemed them ‘unfair to students and poorly designed policy. If they go through, Australia is sleepwalking towards the privatisation of its universities’ (Parker 2014).

Despite amendments to the proposed legislation in the face of heated public debate Abbott and Pyne fractured the required support of the Senate and this led to the ultimate failure of the Higher Education and Reform Amendment Bill in December 2014. Pyne made a last minute attempt to split the Reform Bill10 but the bill was voted down a second time in March 2015. Despite this, Pyne

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remained committed to the bill and was reported as saying ‘We will therefore bring back the higher education reform package for the Parliament to consider. We will not give up. This reform is too important’ (Clarke 2015).

Conclusion

Perhaps there was an overarching imperative for the Coalition government that was not going to be served by the existing evidence-base and the success of a significantly expanded and more equitable education system that had been overseen by the previous government. The failure to pass the reforms has, however, provided much needed breathing space to ensure that Australia does not sleepwalk into a tiered, privatised system, at least without being cognisant of the consequences and the public being more aware of the benefits and risks.

For the public any proposed changes to university funding on the part of the Coalition are now seen through the lens of Pyne’s failed reforms. The new Minister, Simon Birmingham, instigated a ‘review of reviews’ from 1998 to 2014 and announced in October 2015 that ‘higher education funding arrangements for 2016 will not be changed from currently legislated arrangements’ (Keaney 2016). It is not clear that he has abandoned the proposed deregulation of undergraduate university fees and there is now a heightened interest in the accumulating costs of unpaid student debt. A consultation paper Driving Innovation, Fairness and Excellence in Australian Higher Education, that sets out options for reform has been made available for public comment.

The consultation paper poses many of the questions that arose during the two years of policy debate of the Pyne reforms. It is hard to say, however, that the government has gone back to the policy drawing board, and the available evidence base. The paper remains silent on the issue of whether a differentiated system of higher education is in fact intended to generate a new hierarchy of institutions with unchartered consequences for students and for those universities that have historically served and supported academically less well-prepared students. While employing the rhetoric of innovation and the knowledge economy the paper continues to focus on

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the private benefits of higher education and presents the costs associated with growth without commensurate estimates of the return to the economy and the relevant multipliers and spillover benefits associated with increased investment in the higher education system including fiscal externalities such as graduate tax revenue (Cadence Economics 2016). While presenting a strong case for equity and access, it shifts the debate to the mounting HECS debt and repayment thresholds, again potentially having the most impact on low income graduates and women, reinforcing ‘unintended consequences’.

In schooling, commonwealth funding is a powerful change agent that appears to have overcome the issue of state/territor y versus federal responsibilities. The process is one that echoes striking similarities to the rhetoric around higher education reform, where institutions have the ‘freedom’ to raise fees in the proposed deregulated environment, shifting the costs to the students. Will school reform, especially in small jurisdictions, also shift the costs of quality provision to the parents and community?

An agenda that seeks to improve educational outcomes, student success and sees increased resources available to educational institutions, albeit not sourced through government, may gain support in Australia, given the community’s already significant investment in private schooling. Accompanying micro-economic reform in state funding and reform in governance may well be inevitable. But, just as in higher education, the importation of American models from a system not known for its equity, and premised on significant wealth, into the Australian context has the potential to generate profound unintended consequences especially for equity and graduate debt.

Australia is conducting an unprecedented experiment in educational reform. We seem to be doing this by flying imported kites and then looking to see what falls in place on the ground. The formal use of green and white papers early in the policy process, as consultation documents proposing propositions for discussion and importantly identif ying risks, are processes that one expects to accompany major change agendas, but were not part of the process of educational reform under the Abbott government. The Turnbull government is now living with the consequences.

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The prospects for Australia’s evolving education systems and the options presented to date generate significant moral questions around individual and organisational versus societal good and equality as an explicit value that has up until now underpinned Australia’s post-war national educational aspirations.

Endnotes

1 For details of the Demand Driven System see http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook44p/HigherEducation

2 Minister Pyne reminded his audience, many of whom keenly anticipated the articulation of new policy directions, that Menzies had overseen the expansion of the higher education system from ‘six universities and 14 236 students in 1939 to 16 universities and 91 272 students by 1966’ (Pyne 2014b).

3 In schooling policy the Independent Public Schools initiative is part of the commonwealth’s ‘Students First’ package (http://studentsfirst.gov.au) (May 2014) that focuses on ‘teacher quality’, ‘school autonomy’, ‘engaging parents in education’ and ‘strengthening the curriculum’. This is uncannily similar to the US StudentsFirst lobby (http://studentsfirst.org) that aims to ‘elevate teaching’, ‘empower parents’, and ‘govern well’, and incidentally supports the Student Success Act that sees teacher tenure coupled to evaluation.

4 It is noteworthy that Australia’s ‘deregulation’ of higher education has also been read as deregulation of quality assurance in some critical overseas jurisdictions, in particular China, as evidenced at the Sino-Australia Forum on Transnational Education and Student Mobility, Beijing, March 2015.

5 Universities Australia was established on 22 May 2007 as the peak body representing the university sector and replaced the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (AVCC).

6 Universities Australia (2014) An Open Letter to Senators from Universities Australia, 24 November, https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/news/media-releases/An-open-letter-to-Senators-from-Universities-Australia#.V1UP0cdBnbB.

7 Glover, B. ‘Address to the National Press Club, 9 March 2015, https://npc.org.au/speakers/professor-barney-glover-2/

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8 Markwell was well aware of the huge gap between the resources available to the world’s best noting the Productivity Commission observation that ‘Harvard University’s assets alone…are larger than the combined assets of Australia’s 37 publicly funded universities’ http://www2.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/publications/docs/RotaryClubof Melbourne060903.pdf.

9 This committee was established in 1961 as a committee of the Australian Universities Commission and chaired by L. H. Martin, http://hdl.voced.edu.au/10707/228215.

10 In March 2015 Minister Pyne split his reform bill in a desperate bid to gain Senate support. The split essentially separated the proposed 20 percent funding cut in the Commonwealth Grants Scheme and the proposed deregulation of fees and providers. He also guaranteed an additional twelve months funding for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Fund (NCR IS).

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