Ambitious Universities Accord promises better, fairer system

The education ministry has finally unveiled its proposals for revamping Australia’s higher education system in the coming decade, which include an array of recommendations on student fees, well-being, funding, teaching, research and university governance – and the creation of a more equitable system.

The proposals have been published in the Australian Universities Accord report, which took a year to finalise and recommends that at least 80% of the workforce will need a university qualification by 2050, a proportion that currently stands at 60%.

“Raising tertiary education attainment to these levels will not be easy. It can only be achieved by making the higher education system far more equitable,” said the report.

A blueprint for the future

The country’s Minister for Education Jason Clare said while unveiling the report on Sunday 25 February that the accord will help to drive the change. “It will help us build a better and fairer education system where no one is held back, and no one is left behind … This is a plan not for one budget, but a blueprint for the next decade and beyond.”

In addition to raising tertiary education attainment rates to 80%, the report recommends increasing the proportion of university-educated Australians aged 25 to 34 years from 45% to 55% by 2050, and raising the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with a tertiary level vocational or technical qualification to 40% by 2050.

Another important recommendation is that government-supported students (most undergraduates in Australia) should still pay different amounts for different areas of study and the fees should reflect “projected potential lifetime earnings” for graduates. In practical terms, this would return to a logic that helped set fee levels before the previous government’s higher education strategy.

In this report, financial institutions are asked to view student loans differently from other debt when assessing whether or not to approve a bank loan.

It aims to set a target to more than double the number of government-funded students by 2050 from the current 860,000 to 1.8 million. It also recommends a new “Solving Australia’s Challenges Fund” to reward universities that use their research expertise and capability to solve national problems. The size of this fund is unclear.

Reversal of earlier policy

Associate Professor Gwilym Croucher, deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne, told University World News one of the most prominent proposals in the accord is the reversal of some or all of the fee increases introduced under the previous government’s Job-ready Graduates (JRG) programme.

“The report is scathing of the Morrison government’s JRG policies introduced in 2021. Core to the JRG was the increase in fees for many students. This fuelled debts when it increased fees for a lot of popular subjects in humanities, communications and human movement degrees while also increasing the already high fees in law and commerce but by much less,” said Croucher.

“For example, the cost of many subjects in an arts degree rose by 113% under the scheme. In 2023, someone studying humanities was paying around AU$16,000 [US$10,500] a year for an arts degree. Add in the fees for a masters or graduate professional qualification, and graduates with high debts become commonplace rather than outliers. It is not unheard of now for people to have debts over AU$100,000,” he said.

According to Croucher, reversing this would mean significant reductions for many students. “But it would come with a serious price tag to return to anything close to the previous settings. It could cost the federal budget a billion dollars or more, depending on the final details.

“This would be worth it, not just for students but also because it was a seriously flawed policy from the outset,” he added.

Few suggested revenue measures

Many analysts have welcomed aspects of the accord, particularly around making higher education more affordable for Australian students. However, a significant challenge is that there are few suggested revenue measures other than funds being redistributed from large and wealthy universities, mainly those with high international fee income, to those with less.

A number of Australia’s wealthiest universities – known as the Group of Eight – have also criticised the recommendations for a higher education fund, with the government to match contributions until it reaches AU$10 billion.

Mark Scott, vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, told the public broadcaster SBS that the group believes the plan essentially involves taxing the money being raised by the top universities through international students and philanthropy.

“I think we would have trouble attracting the top international university students we have now if they knew they would be taxed on their funding. I also think philanthropists, those people who make donations to universities, would also be reluctant if they knew that their money was going to be taxed on giving it to the university of their choice,” he said.

Associate Professor Peter Hurley of Victoria University told University World News there are big ambitions to increase the participation in tertiary education and the accord report is trying to set up a system that can handle the growth.

“There is a need to replace the old funding system with something new and this report suggests some reforms. But the detail is left to a yet-to-be-established Tertiary Education Commission.

This is understandable because there is a lot of technical work that is needed to finalise a model, but it does mean that a lot of the hard work will need to be done later,” he said.

The Australian government said there will be an official response within months while it considers the recommendations.