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The Australian government¡¯s plan for accommodating a predicted 200,000 extra students is a ¡°disastrous, dysfunctional approach¡±?that will leave enrolments ¡°much lower¡± than the ¡°apparent funded capacity¡± of the university system, a Sydney conference has heard.

Monash University policy analyst Andrew Norton said the government¡¯s interventionist instincts would undermine its ambition to ramp up university participation. Norton likened current policies to those that prevailed under 2000s education minister Brendan Nelson, when the funding logic was ¡°we need X thousand engineers so we¡¯re going to allocate X thousand places to engineering¡±.

¡°That system does not [fit] the realities of [student] demand,¡± Norton told the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Summit. ¡°As a result, you get¡­stranded resources that are theoretically available but can't be used because they¡¯re allocated to things that people don¡¯t want to do.¡±

Norton cited the government¡¯s decision to reserve additional undergraduate places, promised before its 2022 election victory, for disadvantaged students. ¡°Every criterion you¡¯re adding makes it less likely you¡¯ll find anyone who meets all the criteria, and as a result those places basically weren¡¯t used.¡±

Education minister Jason Clare told the summit that universities were experiencing record growth. ¡°Over the next 10 years there will be about 200,000 more students in our universities,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s important that this is managed in the right way. That means allocating places to support the whole system, rather than the hunger games we sometimes see at the moment.¡±

Clare said one of the jobs of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec), which began operating in an interim capacity in July, would be to use compacts with individual universities to ¡°build a system rather than have universities constantly competing against each other¡±.

For example, Atec could tackle the erosion of language programmes by bringing the sector together to ¡°make one university the home for one language, so¡­you¡¯ve got the system working in a more coordinated way¡±.

Asked why the approach should prove more successful than the former Labor government¡¯s mission-based based compacts, which failed to foster differentiation among universities when they were introduced almost 20 years ago, Clare said: ¡°You¡¯re going to have to give it time¡±.

¡°You don¡¯t want to totally upend the system and make universities different in 2027 to what they might be in 2026. But I would hope if we¡¯re sitting here in 10 years¡¯ time that the system doesn¡¯t look as homogenous then as it does now.¡±

Norton said he was ¡°extremely nervous¡± about a system that allowed Atec to ¡°split universities off one by one and do these special deals¡± because universities would ¡°always capitulate to whatever Atec or the department wants.

¡°There¡¯s been a culture of compliance with the commonwealth [where] unis just sign up, no matter what they think of it privately. They are so dependent on this money, they feel like they¡¯ve got little choice.¡±

Norton said Atec¡¯s proposal to limit over-enrolments at each university would also suppress growth. Nelson¡¯s introduction of a similar measure in the early 2000s had triggered a plunge in participation ¡°which we can still see in the lifetime attainment figures today¡±.

He said the ability to over-enrol was vital for dealing with ¡°unexpected shifts in demand¡±, especially at regional universities?that were often the only viable option for people wanting to study on campus.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com