Category: Higher education markets

Are Australian students reluctant to choose?

Andrew Norton9 Comments

The visiting boss of Universities UK, their Universities Australia equivalent, says that Australian students are used to studying near their home. It means student choice here will take longer to evolve than in the UK, where leaving home to study is common (they are getting a very partial demand-driven system).

That Australian students are stay-at-homes is a commonly held view, but there is not much research on how often Australians move to study. The DEEWR student statistics show that about 11% of students are enrolled outside their home state. But the 2006 census showed that about 40% of 18-19 year old university students were not living with their parents.

Of course many of these are likely to still be fairly close to the family home; living in a share house in Fitzroy is more fun than living with your parents in Camberwell. But it shows a capacity and willingness to move.

There are signs of national marketing. Both Bond and James Cook universities have been advertising on Melbourne TV in the last few weeks (admittedly SBS). This suggests that at least some universities think that students can be persuaded to travel long distances.

All the other mobility statistics – jobs, houses, travel – suggest that Australians are happy to go somewhere new or do something new. If student mobility to study is lower than in other countries I doubt it is anything deep in the culture. It is a pragmatic decision that Australian universities are quite similar, and that therefore there is not much point in moving to study. If universities differentiate themselves more, I would expect more mobility.

Overseas student reforms bad for higher ed market design

Andrew Norton2 Comments

Declining international student numbers prompted the government to commission a report from former NSW politician Michael Knight, and his report was released today. The government has accepted his recommendations.

Most of Knight’s recommendations are sensible. But his report would also lead to a visa system that is biased in favour of universities at both ends of the course of study: in a easier process for getting a student visa, and for a new two-year work right after completing the course. This would put non-university providers at a significant disadvantage.

Coming on top of the government’s decision to uncap Commonwealth-supported places for public universities, letting them compete more strongly against private providers and TAFEs offering degrees, and to lift the FEE-HELP debt surcharge from 20% to 25% for undergraduate courses, I could see why the non-university higher education sector could come to the conclusion that the government is trying to put them out of business.

I don’t think the government is trying to wipe out the non-university higher education sector; rather this situation is the result of an ad hoc approach to policymaking, with decisions made without adequate consideration of their systemic consequences.

Though Knight correctly observes that there have been more migration-related problems in the vocational sector than in the universities, I could not find any evidence that the non-university higher education institutions were particularly prone to taking students who broke visa conditions (especially compared to the universities at the cheap end of the market, attracting students from poor countries with the strongest reasons to want to stay in Australia). There was a discussion of the difficulties in setting rules institution by institution, but not for different classes of institution.

An effectively functioning higher education market in Australia requires – to use the now cliched metaphor – a more level playing field. International students are important to building economies of scale in the non-university sector, and making those institutions more able to take on the universities in the domestic market. So Knight’s recommendations, and the government’s apparent acceptance of them, are a setback to good market design in both domestic and international markets.