Category: Higher education

What’s happening with maths at university?

Andrew Norton7 Comments

According to The Australian this morning,

THE Gillard government is under fresh pressure to counter the decline of maths at universities and at schools after scrapping an incentive plan that will see student HECS fees in maths and science almost double.

I don’t know what is happening at schools, but at universities there was a 13% increase in maths enrolments by commencing students between 2008 and 2010. However, this was a lower increase than other science subjects and the overall increase in all non-science subjects.

While there have been shortages of maths teachers at schools, there has never been any real shortage of maths graduates as such. Maths graduates have generally ‘underperformed’ relative to other graduates when seeking work. And in practice they pursue a wide range of careers:


(2006 census, male graduates whose main field of study in their highest degree was classified as ‘mathematical sciences’.)

Universities lose a lottery

Andrew Norton1 Comment

In the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook statement, the government announced that it would cut part of its ‘performance’ funding for higher education institutions.

The idea was that universities, through ‘compacts’ with the federal government, would sign up to various performance goals relative to a benchmark. If they met their goals, they would get part of the available performance funding.

The student experience and quality of learning performance performance measures will no longer be funded (the MYEFO does not say whether the targets will be abandoned; other parts of the compacts seem to expect unis to do what the Commonwealth wants without funding). Participation and social inclusion performance funding will be retained.

I’m not a fan of these ‘performance’ funds. I’ve called on universities to ignore them. Aside from the difficulty in devising robust indicators that don’t encourage gaming or downplay other important goals, higher education policymaking is too unstable for the performance programs to be credible.

The indicators end up changing almost every year – this abolition is just part of a pattern – so there is little point in universities putting in place long-term programs to achieve their targets. Effectively, the performance funds are little better than lotteries. The universities that happen to be good at whatever indicator is favoured in a particular year will get rewarded, rather than the performance fund causing the good performance.

The universities will be sorry to lose the cash ($105 million in 2013-14). But they won’t be sorry if they also lose the associated bureaucracy of trying to get their share of it.

Science degrees to cost $11,000 more

Andrew Norton2 Comments

One of the policy decisions in today’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook is to rescind Labor’s cut in the student contribution amounts for science, maths and statistics subjects.

While students starting before 2013 will be grandfathered, those starting in 2013 will according to the government’s estimates pay $3,662 a year more, or about $11,000 over a three year degree.

I opposed the cut to student contributions at the time, among other reasons because I doubted that it would increase demand. The MYEFO repeats this argument, citing the Bradley review of higher education policy.

The Bradley review, however, reported shortly before the cut to student contributions came into effect. The student applications data since suggests that my prediction, along with Bradley’s prediction, was wrong.

In the two years after the cut took place, demand for science courses increased 32% in a market that was up 12% overall. Though the slow-moving DEEWR bureaucracy hasn’t yet published the 2011 applications data, media reports earlier in the year from the tertiary admissions centres suggests that science demand was up again.

Given that science graduates were having above-average difficulty finding work on course completion even before the demand surge converted to more graduates, cooling demand is not a problem if that is what occurs.

Though we can never tell for sure simply based on applications, a drop in demand following a price increase would help increase our confidence that relative prices were a science demand driver.

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.

A new private uni, established just in time

Andrew Norton4 Comments

The American for-profit university conglomerate Laureate International Universities is to open a campus in Adelaide, to be known as Torrens University Australia. (An earlier, detailed description of the proposal is here (big pdf).

Universities Australia, the lobby group for current universities, said that it would be pleased to consider an application from Torrens. But it added:

“However, Universities Australia is surprised that the South Australian Government has made this decision prior to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency beginning its regulatory functions in January 2012.”

Actually, it is not very surprising at all. The proposed rules for admitting new universities under the TEQSA regime make it extremely difficult to become a university. At best, it would be a slow, evolutionary process for another kind of higher education provider to become a university. The biggest obstacle is that to be approved as a full university, research activity is required in three broad fields of study. Not many institutions can sustain loss-making activities across such a range.

The current protocols for approving new universities are also quite protectionist. But there
is a provision in the protocols on ‘greenfield’ universities that have a ‘high probability’ of meeting the general criteria for being an Australian university. That’s what Torrens and the SA government are using, before this option is closed off by TEQSA rules.

I fear TEQSA is going to bury higher education in red tape, so I am pleased that this new competitor was allowed in before they get the chance to stop it.

A degree and net worth

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Last Friday the ABS put out their latest report on household wealth and wealth distribution. This includes average ‘study loan’ debt, though there is nothing in the ‘assets’ section on the value of human capital. This is not a criticism of the ABS; human capital is not a directly tradeable asset and there are substantial methodological issues in valuing it.

Nevertheless, for most younger people their human capital is their most important asset. If what we are hoping to measure is capacity to command resources over the longer term (superannuation is included), then excluding human capital gives a fundamentally misleading idea of how wealth is distributed.

Combining numbers from two tables gives us an idea of what impact this has. The highest average HECS debt is in the households with the lowest net worth. Unfair! Students impoverished by debt! But looking at average HECS debts by gross household income quintiles things are reversed – the highest average HECS debt is in the top income quintiles. Equity! The rich being forced to pay their way!

What I suspect is happening here is that the net worth numbers are picking up many new households, graduates starting to earn good salaries but still renting and with little superannuation. But the household income numbers are picking up graduates living together; since they tend to overtake the incomes of non-graduates early in their careers putting two or more graduates together in a household gives them high collective earnings.

Because there are very large life cycle effects in wealth distribution, it will always be far more equal over a lifetime than at any one time. HECS/HELP will make it mildly more progressive.

Separate student amenities fees to return

Andrew Norton12 Comments

After much Coalition stalling, the government’s amenities fee legislation passed into law today. However, it is not a restoration of the previous status quo. The key differences are:

* while before 2006 unis could charge what they liked in a separate amenities fee, now it is capped – a maximum of $263 next year, with indexation for future years;

* before 2006, it was an up-front fee, but now it can be deferred through a new income-contingent loan scheme, SA-HELP;

* before 2006, there was no Commonwealth regulation of what they could spend the amenities fee on (though there had been some state legislation), but now there are some restrictions, including on political parties and local, state or federal campaigns;

* before 2006, there was no Commonwealth regulation of universities in their provision of general student and advocacy services, and now there is (same legislation, but not connected to the amenities fee – the trigger is receipt of Commonwealth grants, not the amenities fee).

So overall there is a substantial increase in bureaucratic complexity compared to the pre-2006 situation.

As longtime readers of my blog will know, my position is that both sides to this debate are wrong. A separate amenities fee is a relic of an earlier funding system, in which the Commonwealth paid grants that were specifically for academic matters (some of which they recovered via HECS from 1989), and permitted universities to charge students for non-academic matters.Read More »

Please study at home

Andrew Norton6 Comments

The bill introduced last month to reduce the discounts for up-front payment of student contribution amounts or early repayment of HELP debts (discussed here and here) contains a previously unannounced policy: to stop Australian students getting tuition subsidies or HELP loans if their course of study is primarily at an overseas campus of an Australian university.

Peter Garrett’s second reading speech explained the rationale:

As students are only required to pay back their HECS-HELP debt if they file an Australian tax return, there is a higher risk that HECS-HELP debts incurred offshore will not be repaid, or not repaid for a longer period of time.

I’m not sure how big a problem this is in itself, but it is a sign that the government is concerned about HELP debt held by people not living in Australia. That the government makes no attempt to recover HELP debt from Australians working overseas is one clear design flaw in the income-contingent loan scheme.

It’s a flaw that has been exacerbated by other changes to law and policy. As dual citizenship has been permitted by Australia and other countries, the number of people with work rights in multiple countries has increased. More people can work overseas, and it would be very surprising if we did not see more people doing so.

The source countries of migration to Australia have also shifted towards the Asian countries in which Australian universities have their overseas campuses. According to the 2010 enrolment data, nearly 7% of domestic students speak an east or south-east Asian language at home (and probably more can speak one, but tend to speak English at home). A similar proportion were born in those countries. It would presumably be relatively easy for them to return to Asia to study at an Australian campus.

The flow of people between Australia and other countries is not a problem it itself. But it becomes a problem when it interacts with a debt recovery system designed for a less mobile world.

Is academic professionalism adequate?

Andrew Norton5 Comments

“Over the past two decades, there has been a serious diminution in professionalism as we are
compelled more and more to complete accountability/kpi measures, as if jumping over ‘productivity’
hurdles could substitute for professional ethics.”

– quote from an academic, p.24 of the Australian Academic Profession in Transition report.

Overall, 37.3 per cent of academics have never undertaken training in university teaching,
and 72.1 per cent indicate that training is not mandatory in their institution.

– report of survey research, p. 25 of the Australian Academic Profession in Transition report.

As this report makes clear, collecting data and filling in forms – administrivia, as Conrad calls it – is the bane of academic life. I’m quite prepared to believe that some of it is unnecessary and much of the rest could be delegated to administrative staff.

But I am much less prepared to believe that we can put our faith in the ‘professionalism’ of academics. Quite clearly in my view, academia failed to develop a proper professional ethos around teaching. Though things have improved in the last 20 years, still a very large minority of academics have not undertaken any training in one of the key tasks of their occupation. The previously abysmal results recorded in the survey sent to completing students are now reasonable though not great.

Until the norms of good teaching practice are internalised in the academic profession, external pressures to protect and promote student interests are necessary.

On track for 20% low SES students by 2020?

Andrew Norton3 Comments

As education minister, Julia Gillard set a target of 20% of undergraduate university students coming from the lowest 25% of SES backgrounds by 2020. Some enrolment statistics released last week showed a 0.30 percentage point gain between 2009 and 2010 to reach 16.47%. This is the biggest increase since this time series began in 2001.

The figure below shows that if this growth rate was maintained for the decade, the target would come close to being met. On the other hand, if the growth rate was the average of 2009 and 2010 the target would be missed by a largish margin.

Which scenario is more likely? At least in the short term, there is a good chance that strong growth will continue. For commencing students, there was a .64 percentage point gain, so as this cohort moves through the system the low SES share will expand. We don’t have any detailed 2011 data yet, but with some expected additional growth in overall numbers I would anticipate that low SES numbers will again improve. Read More »