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December 17, 2008
The Bradley Review Report is still not online. The Departments website has nothing on the Review. It is a blank text. So I have to rely on commentary by others who have access to the report.
From what I can gather it argues that the financial situation faced by universities has been worsening; it also confirms that Australia is losing its earlier competitive edge - "Australia is losing ground against a number of its competitor countries on a range of indicators… In 2020 Australia will not be where we aspire to be – in the top group of OECD countries in terms of participation and performance – unless we act, and act now.”
Steven Schwartz says that the review does contain two very big ideas - Australia needs more university graduates and university funding should be “driven by student demand”. On the first point Schwartz says that the reports states:
Australia’s standard of living.....depends on our winning an international educational competition for the most skilled workforce. Put simply, we need more graduates in order to ensure our national prosperity. .....Given that school leavers from middle class and professional backgrounds already attend university in large numbers, increasing the number of Australian graduates requires that capable students from currently under-represented backgrounds (low-income, rural, indigenous) enter higher education and successfully complete their degrees.
Many of the review’s recommendations proceed logically from this premise. If we want to attract more students from under-represented backgrounds, then we need outreach programs designed to raise aspirations and student support funds to help low-income students while studying. We need to concentrate on outcomes rather than inputs and we should have agreed targets by which to measure progress.
Schwartz says that:
The review’s other big idea - student-driven funding - will ensure a Commonwealth subsidised place to every student accepted by an approved higher education institution. Universities would be free to determine how many students they wish to enrol in various subjects and a new place would be created more-or-less automatically.This reform has the potential to provide students with greater choice than they have now; it would also make it possible for universities to respond to student demand.
However, universities be forbidden from raising the level of private contribution that students make toward their education (that is, tuition fees would be capped at current levels).The review recognises that price competition is a major mechanism for delivering efficiency, but claims that it is necessary to cap fees in order to keep “established” institutions from sharply raising prices.
Update:
The Report has finally been released to the general public and concerned citizens. The academic and think tank commentators had their copies much earlier. It says that the reiew
was established to address the question of whether this critical sector of education is structured, organised and financed to position Australia to compete effectively in the new globalised economy. The panel has concluded that, while the system has great strengths, it faces significant, emerging threats which require decisive action. To address these, major reforms are recommended to the financing and regulatory frameworks for higher education.
It argues that the nation will need more well-qualified people if it is to anticipate and meet the demands of a rapidly moving global economy. but that from 2010 the supply of people with undergraduate qualifications will not keep up with demand. It goes on to say that:
The measures supported in this report are designed to reshape the higher education system to assist Australia to adapt to the challenges that it will inevitably face in the future. However, because the world is in a period of rapid and unpredictable change, it is not clear if they will be sufficient to enable the higher education system to meet these challenges adequately. Because other countries have already moved to address participation and investment in tertiary education, as a means of assisting them to remain internationally competitive, the recommendations in this report, if fully implemented, are likely to do no more than maintain the relative international performance and position of the Australian higher education sector.
The policy language is all about Australia's competitive position in the global economy, improving its relative performance against other nations and education as an export industry that underpins the earnings of the higher education sector. In a globalised world, higher education and skills development are central to national
productivity growth, which is the key to our economic future.
That's the ALP's growth strategy. Will Rudd and Gillard deliver on that?
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Retaining students in education does more for reducing unemployment rates than anything else. You have to wonder what sort of jobs our graduates get when they finish with all of the IT jobs being off-shored to India, the finance sector is pretty keen on off-shoring jobs also and pathology labs ditto.
The type of skilled workforce mining companies require involves on the job training and so when miners slash jobs you can predict they will need skilled migration to ramp up their workforce in the next mining boom.
Will the global financial crisis reduce the numbers of overseas students wanting to study in Australia? I predict lower demand for university places in 2009 & 2010.