At the AFR higher education conference this week Jason Clare was open to amending his capping student places bill. He subsequently inserted amendments on ministerial conditions and floor numbers of places for public universities.
But the minister remains in denial about the consequences of capping over-enrolments at a low level, to prevent what he calls ‘hunger games’ competition between universities. For universities allocated less than 15,000 Commonwealth supported places the cap is 5% of their total. For larger universities the cap is 750 places, equivalent to 2-3% of their allocation. Above these levels CSPs will be zero-funded, compared to student contribution only funding under the current system.
In response to a journalist’s question about this issue the minister said that ‘if you think that a kid from the western suburbs [of Sydney] is going to design something that makes it harder for kids from the western suburbs to get a chance to go to university, then you’re wrong. This is about doing the opposite.’
But on the available data Sydney is the place where his over-enrolment policy puts higher education opportunities at greatest risk.
ATEC seems to be engaging in bureaucratic manoeuvres to avert this outcome, but as transitional measures in the bill lapse that task will become more difficult.
Sydney over-enrolment
Based on 2025 estimates produced by ATEC (not published but in an appendix to my Senate inquiry submission), Sydney was the only multi-university city where every institution was over-enrolled. In the table below I have added to ATEC’s figures the over-enrolment caps proposed by the government. These caps would not be imposed immediately – more on this below – but if they had been in place for 2025 it would have been disastrous for aspiring Sydney students. It would have cost more than 15,000 places, the equivalent of shutting down a medium size public university (the Sydney universities are all big).
At a national level ACU and Notre Dame, which both have Sydney campuses, had some regulated capacity to take more students. The University of Wollongong also serves parts of Sydney, but it was already over-enrolled in 2025.
Andrew Norton 