2009 Budget on Tertiary Education

Just went to a public seminar on 2009 budget and tertiary education yesterday. The speakers painted somewhat darker picture of the budget. I only remember some of aspects:

• The government wish to increase the domestic student placements, but the funding as suggested in the budget falls short of covering the tuition cost. The tertiary education provider will still seek to balance this by admission of international students. It was noted however that TAFE can run a course at lower cost (federal support can cover this), and hence the government should to explore the possibility of more degree from TAFE institutes.
• Student with financial difficulty: the good sign is that the by-postage criterion will be scraped and replaced with a better measuring system. It was noted that more could be done at secondary education level, which prompted the question regarding the role of universities.
  
• TEQSA: this will be a new institute that the speakers hope to fill many gaps between the government and the universities. Since there is no real guideline on the role of TEQSA, many hope that it will act as a regulator to ensure that the minimum standard is met by all tertiary education providers.
• Performance-based funding: a few questions were asked of its necessity. It still depends on the government. In my opinion, I believe that under this scheme there will be tendency to overstimulate in a few areas of research, which may or may not be good for Australia. Concern was raised regarding the institute that fails to meet the performance benchmark; how should the government assists in increasing its performance.
• Bradley report: the speaker mentioned that someone has calculated that after all the bucks get in the system, only 37% of recommended by Bradley report will be achieved - not good considering that Australia needs to catch up with other developed countries in term of research.
• Good news is an increase in fellowship placement aimed to stop "brain drain", and attract bright young oversea researchers.
• Recent ethnic conflict in Melbourne demonstrates the need to ensure the better conditions for oversea students. It was hoped that TEQSA will cater for that since currently there is no written guideline or regulation for university on its responsibility for its (international) students. Current system is based on good faith. 
• This leads to the question of international attraction.  Bradley report recommended 1000 PhD scholarship places which this government chose to omit in this budget. This will go a long in term of attracting new oversea researchers.