The Education Budget - more pain for higher education
11 May 1999
The Prime Minister’s so-called ‘Education Budget’ has gone missing in action - especially as far as Australia’s public universities are concerned.
Dr Carolyn Allport, President of the National Tertiary Education Union which represents 25,000 university staff, said that the Federal Budget was a cruel blow to those working in higher education, and offered no joy to students or to those seeking a university place.
‘The Australian university system has suffered its fourth consecutive year of funding cuts, with another 1% to come off operating grants in 2000.’ said Dr Allport.
The Federal Budget will abolish the $40m HECS-exempt scholarships scheme for disadvantaged students from 2000. It has also halved the funding for the Committee for University Teaching and Staff Development in 2000 from $8m to $4m.
‘Mr Howard’s "Education Bonanza" is only for those who can pay their own way. The Government has done nothing to encourage those who, for reasons of social or economic disadvantage, find it difficult to study at university. Instead, it’s cutting equity schemes which might have offered them some hope.’ said Dr Allport.
‘It’s also cutting the only funded initiative for rewarding and improving the quality of university teaching - despite the fact that the government has said that teaching and learning is the core business of universities, and this Budget was supposed to be about Australia’s education future’.
The NTEU welcomed the massive increase for health and medical research funding, which follows Government’s acceptance of the recommendations of the Wills Report.
This indicates that the Government is able to embrace a bigger picture for Australia’s future - at least in the Health portfolio. However, the opportunities for getting full value for this money are limited by the fact that university funding - including research infrastructure - is spread so thinly.
For example, the funding for research infrastructure offered in this Budget still represents a 16% drop in research infrastructure funding between 1999 and 2000. Research infrastructure money in 2000 is now at about 1996 levels.
‘The Government is not even playing catch-up here’, Dr Allport added.
‘If the Prime Minister were serious about investing in our intellectual capital, he’d be doing something about the real problems confronting our universities: falling levels of government funding, increased costs to students and the urgent need to provide proper funding for staff resources’.
‘As far as higher education is concerned, the ‘Education Budget’ is just a cruel joke’.