The higher education reforms Dan Tehan announced last month make the idea of ‘national priority’ courses, which are often but not always linked to employment prospects, a central feature.

This is a significant conceptual shift in the funding system. Historically, deliberately steering the system by course has been a marginal aspect of policy. It has occasionally been done by allocating new places to preferred fields, especially in the mid-to-late 2000s. In the same period, some changes to relative student contributions, particularly in the case of science, were designed to boost demand. But universities, influenced by student preferences, largely decided how student places were divided between courses.

In the Tehan proposal, universities will remain the main decision makers. The government will not directly allocate money to national priority fields. Instead, the government will send price signals to students across all fields of education, with low student contributions indicating national priorities, and high student contributions discouraging non-priority fields. Altered student preferences will, if the policy goes to plan, cause universities to shift student places to priority areas.

Student contribution effects

To date, most discussion has centred on what effect the new student contributions will have. My own position on this is mid-debate.

Read More »