Looking at the funding that Western Australia is tagged to get, even if they sign up, they lose about $760m to gain $300m.

This is Labor redistributing school funding from states hostile to labor to the battleground states to save a few seats.

http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2013/04/15/1226621/121246-130416-nicholson.jpg

The Government could solve this funding problem without touching the Universities. Stop throwing good money after bad by stopping the flow of Aid money out of Australia. $8.1 Billion, wasted.

As a past university student, I have studied externally, internally, part time, and full time on and off campus at three Australian universities. Never to my knowledge has any sector of the economy been in more desperate need of a financial shake-up than our universities. Replete with redundant and redolent tenured academics gabbling long prepared lectures and dreaming of their next sabbatical, equally replete with lazy students with neither the capacity nor intention of taking a degree other than in beer swilling, and offering a plethora of hat-making and basket weaving courses, useless counselling services, and top heavy administrative staff levels - all with with no likely benefit to the long suffering community that supports the system. Few academics work to a well prepared lesson plan, and even fewer practice basic classroom control so that many lectures are little more than student talk-fests - so much so that many genuine students actually avoid some lectures.
Go for it Julia - a substantial reduction in financing might well force the powers that be (such as the author of this article) to a much needed re-evaluation of higher learning outcomes - perhaps even prune the dead wood.
Fat chance!

I'm with GYM FISH.
Last evening on Radio National a commentator, bemoaning Julia Gillard's university efficiency dividend, revealed that he was associated with a university which offered two off twelve week semesters per annum.

The commentator also revealed that overseas universities offered two off sixteen and even eighteen week semesters per annum. In those overseas universities an undergraduate course could easily be completed in one less year than in Australia. Such a system here would probably save enough to fund the Gonski proposals.

Another way to make some savings would be to dispense with all funding of school chaplains.

Also many courses in Australian Universities are dumbed down to an extra ordinary degree. One example I am aware of is a computer science course which initially included four semesters of Mathematics (48 weeks) but now has one semester.

Business Studies is a course that could be completed part time at TAFE and both students and taxpayers would be much better off. As a senior accountant in one very large Australian company once commented to me; "I did accountancy because I wasn't good enough at maths to do engineering."

University degrees should be only available in difficult front line subjects, not in subjects which can be studied adequately in simpler, more efficient ways.

I'm with you GYM-Fish & Foyle. I did my Computer science course at TAFE. Most of it was taught by a Uni Professor who was only interested in pushing his own programme that he had written & he was only interested in Unix. I asked him, "Why Unix? & he said that that real computer people only work from, the word escapes me, green screen. For Maths we did "Surds" I still haven't figured out we were supposed to do with that. Strangely not many people passed his course & sorry no refund. He lived in a world of his own.

My other gripe is the Arts Courses. Some these courses offered are completely useless in the real world. But you do come out of Uni with a degree. Social Coursed are full of men hating feminists who have been through the TAFE feel good courses, They have been dumped by their husband's because they are "nutty" Then go on to Uni to learn how better to blame men for everything. The only people they associate with at Uni are other Nutters who have had the same problem with their husband's. Therefore all men are ar$e$o(e$. Then if you don't attend "X" many demonstrations then you will fail the course. I don't see what "Ancient English into Old English" (old girlfriend)is good for unless you are going to go that way either, she didn't, but has a degree.

The cost of these courses should double & the courses for Science, Engineering & Doctors should be cut by half.

Gym-Fish, Foyle & Jayb,
thanks for giving me hope that there are people out there who can still think.

Come on fellers, do you really think young trainee nurses would be better off in the ward, in all that mess, than sitting in a nice clean lecture hall?

You wouldn't want them to have some idea of what they are going to do, once they have finished, now would you?

I believe all uni lecturers should be appointed for no more than 4 years, with a 2 year break, working in their field in private enterprise, before being eligible for another government job. That way they would have to keep up to date, rather than years behind in much of what they know.

No it doesn't, it may just imply that the marginal benefit of a billion or two dollars of the current Uni spend is lower than that for schools.

One simple solution would be for the Federal Govt to cut funding to private schools, not sure of the figure but is in the high billions, particularly to Church run private schools, they have ridiculous fees for students and pay no tax, how is this fair?

A funding reduction to private schools could easily offset tertiary funding cut-backs, but I also stronly agree with earlier posters, cut the fat from the Uni's and a bucket load of money could be saved also.

Individual: thanks for giving me hope that there are people out there who can still think.

Thanks mate. Apparently I'm an Analytic Thinker, according to an analysis I had to do once for work. They tell me that that makes me a Greenie & a PC person’s worst nightmare. It does explain why I get into so much trouble with some of the posters on here. No, I’m not going to apologise.

As I said before Money & religion are not strange bedfellows, in fact just the opposite.

I don't see any problem as long as the Companies adhere to Australian Law in Australia & don't sneak Sharia into the equation as has been done with QANTAS & not serving pork any more on any flights because it teamed up with an Arab Airline.

I tend to agree with some of the posters but as we all know, with a primary poll of about 29 per cent, Gillard will never see this as legislation, let alone law.

Some major leakages of education funding have been overlooked by Professor Aitkin but picked up by correspondents GYM-FISH and Foyle - notably (GYM-FISH) the waste on management. For an idea of the scale of this ripoff, consider the 8c in the education budget dollar going to management in the 1960s compared with the more than 65c today. Universities worked perfectly well in the 60s and the only effect of this massive extra management burden today is to interfere with the provision of teaching and research and enforce the dumbing down of courses and assessment standards.

Managers have also ensured that the funds stripped from universities to shore up Gonski are to come from the students - especially those least in a position to make financial sacrifices - and from the academic staff, not from management.

Universities’ funding should be slashed - really slashed - until the universities redeploy to casual toilet cleaning duties the army of self-serving managers and hangers-on to bring the expenditure on management down to 8c in the education dollar and those people that universities are supposed to be about can get on with teaching, learning and basic research. At the same time universities could be funded to pay no VC more than, say, the $450K p.a. salary that the USA pays the nation’s President. These measures would enable serious money to be transferred to primary, secondary and tertiary education.

For the crippling effect of non-producing managers on the work of the university sector, download and read Dr Donald Meyers’ recent closely descriptive book at http://www.australianuniversities.id.au/ . It’s an eye-opener.

< For my part the announcement is another genuinely abysmal decision by the Labor Government. You don't aid the education sector by shifting large amounts of money within it. >

Agreed Don.

.

<< The Government could solve this funding problem without touching the Universities >>

YES Jayb, but I wouldn’t touch international aid. I’d abolish the despicable baby bonus, and have a good hard look at other financial advantages people get for having kids.

And I’d make an all-out effort to STOP onshore asylum seeking and redirect part of the enormous expense associated with it into education.

That would do it!

I’m NOT with you GYM-FISH, Foyle or Jayb!

As a past university student of two unis, member of staff, guest lecturer and long-time professional associate, I agree that there is scope for the improvement in efficiencies, as there is in all sectors. But a huge reduction in funding, just out of the blue, is extremely bad and counterproductive to the improvement or maintenance of a decent tertiary education sector.

The problems with university education that you elucidate GYM-FISH, in a somewhat overstated manner but certainly with a modicum of truth, are not going to be improved by the simple act of slashing the budget.

As you say; << Fat chance >>.

I agree with David Gonski that this funding should not have come at the expense of another education sector.

And I agree with Tony Windsor that abolishing the baby bonus would have been a much better source of funding.

I also agree with funding cuts to private schools that pay no tax and to school chaplains.

To Ludwig:

The great mistake, the mistake that tippytoes past the elephant in the loungeroom, is to regard the managerial colossus astride the universities as "education", tertiary or otherwise. They don't teach, they don't learn, they don't do research, they don't do the
n e c e s s a r y administrative work of "keeping the show on the road" - instead they impede all these functions while consuming the lion's share of the education budget. Dumping them could free up universities to focus on real university work, with oodles of cash left over to fund the Gonski reforms in the primary and secondary sectors.

Well, all I can say is that we'd better get used to it, because in just a little over five years, this wasteful mob have put us into a position where we simply can't afford the basics anymore.

If only these fools realized, five years ago, that money is something that can only be spent once and, you can't spend it until you have it, eg, the MRRT flop.

Any voter who supported Julia Gillard, and voted against John Howard in the 96 election has blood on their hands, as they have knowingly supported this gross incompetence.

In any case, Tony Abbotts main challenge will be to stop the boats, as this alone will solve many of the problems, going forward.

As for here and now, even they will have to cause pain in order to balance the books, as step one is to stop the waste.

EmperorJulian, methinks you have overstated your case a tad. If we were to ‘dump’ the management sector of our universities, there would complete mayhem!

Sure, there is plenty of scope for increasing efficiency and cutting costs in that department. But simply ripping a huge amount out of the university budget is not going to improve that situation one iota, while it WILL worsen the core purpose of tertiary education.

On the other hand, killing off the god-awful baby bonus would be an immediate clear advantage to the country!

And I’m sure that if our government was genuine in their desire to stop onshore asylum seeking, they could cut a huge amount out of the associated costs of accommodating them very easily.

I actually agree with cutting university payments. I honestly believe universities have become so disconnected with our economy that we are doing far too much high high level scientific research that no-one here can commercialise. This is basically a subsidy to multinationals. Most of the growth companies in Australia use existing technology in new ways. They dont commercialise research. New business models are teh key. So, I believe we need whole new ways of delivering business education and new ways of conecting universities with companies.

My son did a degree in Business. I asked him how much of the Course Content he actually uses in his work. He was in Senior Management in the Post Office. His answer, "Almost none of it."

I did my Certificate 2 in Business at TAFE. I asked my CEO why we don't implement what we were taught in the Course. His answer, "We have a Business to run."

I have used very little of what I was taught in my Computer Science course at TAFE. The only Course I did that was of any practical use was my Engineering Trade Course, most of what I used daily.

At High School I did, Maths 1&2, English 1&2, History & Geography, Chemistry & Physics, Accounting, Latin & Religion, Woodwork, Metalwork & Tech. Drawing. Most of the content I have never used.

Something needs to be done about the Schools Course contents. Maybe that would save lots of money.

These teachers go to primary School, Secondary School then to Uni, then do a Masters, then to being teachers at Uni. They write books about the Subjects they teach, based on their knowledge. (Eh!?) None of it any practical value in the Real World.

Ludwig: YES Jayb, but I wouldn’t touch international aid.

I would mate, Most of it is used to pay CEO's big Salary's & pay Administration. After paying Government Bribes, inflated Transport prices & local militia, only about 5% actually gets to the people on the ground. Wasted money! (Personal experience)

It seems to me that the problems besetting the tertiary sector stem from one primary source which is not unique to that sector, but is pervading all aspects of our society. Emperor Julian touched on it, but he focussed on the wrong aspect. The problem is managerialism, which has brought a focus on process over outcome, credential over ability, conformity over innovation. It rewards stolidity, discourages individuality and flair.

Managerialists are more concerned with "doing nothing wrong" than with doing anything really well. People are messily unpredictable if left to work things out for themselves and that makes the job of those charged with planning and implementing programs more difficult and can lead to negative outcomes, which can in turn reflect badly on the manager.

The rot really set in when Quality Management and HACCP were misapplied to fields in which they were not appropriate. They are tools to optimise process manufacturing operations, where the environment is strictly controlled and the goods being produced are expected to meet specified parameters, but they have become a standard part of the toolkit of managers and specifiers in fields where the product is inherently variable and its nature inherently ill-defined.

Some private sector firms that rely on innovation for their continued prosperity have actively sought to move away from such a culture. Google, Facebook, Apple are all examples where the management is deliberately non-intrusive and individuality is encouraged. Sure, the testing and QA on a new product is rigorous and all the boxes have to be ticked, but staff are judged on output, not on ability to follow rigid rules. Making mistakes is expected and taking a risk on a new idea that might fail is supported. Sharing ideas and learning from each other is a part of the job description and prescriptive flow-charts are few and far between.

Treating people as interchangeable functional units makes managers' jobs easier, but the best outcome it can achieve is optimisation of a process, it can't create anything new or cope with dynamic inputs effectively. We must fight it.

No quarrel with Antiseptic. Yes the root problem driving BOTH the dumbing down of universities AND the horrendous cost IS managerialism, though there is another colony of white ants: the "needs of industry" lobby (seen among these responses)which demands that universities be handmaidens of corporations - doing their R&D and their training for them - instead of getting on with the human necessity of exploring the basic structure of the world which is something nations can do but businesses can't.

However the Government is ducking the financial cost of the managerial class while transferring funds away from the actual work that universities are there for - which is the appropriate focus for this thread.

Antiseptic: Managerialists are more concerned with "doing nothing wrong" than with doing anything really well.

You're right. the attitude is that if I do something it might be wrong, so I'll do nothing, so nothing get's done. The Railways & the Army fell into this category with junior managers.

Antiseptic: The rot really set in when Quality Management and HACCP were misapplied to fields in which they were not appropriate.

Oh Yes! J.I.T. is a good example. It might work on a production line but it doesn't work on Maintenance. J.I.T. was applied to our Wagon Workshop. We had to get rid of our inventory & order parts for as they were needed. You just can't do that with Maintenance. You might audit the wagon for a particular part in the yard but find a number of things need to be replaced when the wagon is in the shop. The answer from management was to send it around again. Now wagons were taking 2 weeks instead of 1 day to be repaired & put safely back on the road. At a $1000 a day, was that financial sound? Management said it was, because it came off a different budget. (Eh! ?)

The most frustrating thing I have ever done was oversee the introduction of "Quality Assurance" into a manufacturing company I managed.

It took 2 years, & hundred of hours of senior staff who had better things to do, like maintaining quality on the line.

At the finish we had a lovely flow of paperwork.

We had one & a half extra staff to maintain this flow.

We had a slight reduction in efficiency due to production people having to service that paper flow.

We had a slight drop in quality consistency of our produce for 2 reasons.
1/ Those previously responsible for quality now believed it was not their job.
2/ Production staff spent more time on paperwork & less actually on the line.

I heard the same story from suppliers, when I complained of a loss of quality in their products.

This was a prime example of a system designed by academics, to apply to industries they had no understanding of in the first place. Responsibility for quality now became the responsibility of a quality control manager, rather than the people making the stuff.

We were successful because of the quality of our product & service. We did not need extra management & paper work to tell us what we all ready knew.

I gather government departments required extra staff to check the "Quality assurance" credentials of the companies who supplied them.

Jayb, the problem with most tafe colleges, is thisenrollose doing the teaching, either didn't make it, or, they are so out of touch that they seek the safe haven of such institutions.

Hasbeen, the bit that amuses me about all this compliance, on top of compliance, is the fact that our government have to have equities into why our productivity is so low.

HELLO!

In the butchery industry, it is no longer worthwhile makimg yourmown small goods, as the compliance costs, and risks associated with problems, makes it not worth the effort.

Another talent lost.
Though many break the law, those days are numbered.

rehctub: Jayb, the problem with most tafe colleges, is this enrol lose doing the teaching, either didn't make it, or, they are so out of touch that they seek the safe haven of such institutions.

Exactly what I said earlier. Most of them have been to school, been to school been to school & are still at school. They have never run a business & are teaching courses designed by people that have been navel gazing & thought, "Oh, that would be a good idea." then teach it without having it tested in the workforce.

This is what you are paying for when you go to Uni. & as you said, compliance upon compliance upon compliance & no responsibility. This is why Uni costs so much.

The early, dissatisfied posters rather make my point about the perceived attitudes of universities to their students, and I could add other disparaging comments from within my large extended family.

Those intent on seeing management as the problem should remember that the managers are there because of the compliance pushed on to the universities by the Commonwealth when it relinquished real control over them in 1988. The abolition of CTEC, which told universities what they could and could not do and held them to account for doing it, was replaced with a system of 'freedom' accompanied by stringent compliance responsibilities that had not existed previously. Compliance requires management, and if there is a lot of it, then that is because universities are required to comply. The range is very wide. Data have to be obtained, maintained and reported. There are deadlines. There are punishments if the deadlines are not met. Little of this happened when I was a senior person in universities in the 1970s and 1980s. Oh, and then there are 'priorities', and new requirements that are part of general legislation, for example, for disabled students. There were seven distinct 'priorities' that various Commonwealth Governments had set up about students in the 1980s and 1990s — rural and regional, indigenous, women, foreign, mature, returning to the workforce, and so on.

If you want to get rid of management, get rid of the compliance requirements! I'm not sure that that would be a great idea, at least in the long run.

Don, my critique is not of management per se, but the process-driven bureaucratised managerialism that has turned intelligent professionals into clerks ticking boxes so that some other intelligent professional can tick a box in turn and they all get their bonuses.

However, let's not beg the question of causation. The people who constructed the regulatory compliance processes are products of the same education that produced those who implement them. The idea that best practise consists of constraining the agency of the functionaries who interchangeably occupy a given role by implementing rigid process did not suddenly arise from nowhere and impose itself on unsuspecting and unwilling people.

Instead, it is a limited application of TQM to the manufacture of a product, relying on process to ensure conformance with the specification at a defined price point while fulfilling customer orders that it is hoped will meet with consumer. While rigid process control minimises product non-conformance and maximises production volume, it can also lead to a large stock of unwanted product lying in the customer's warehouses if consumer demand does not respond to the supply of product.

Of course, in the educational context the product is students and the customer is the Government, while the consumer is both business and Government. The process control is designed to produce, at a set cost, graduates who will conform to a minimal professional standard that fits them to a career within a corporate world in which their roles are defined and constrained by process, interchangeable parts secure as long as they make sure they diligently follow process and easily replaced if they don't.

Such a model is now a norm for any large corporation, where the graduates who have most assiduously complied with the demands of process refine those processes to ensure that the disruptive potential of individual agency can be ignored when they produce their presentations and projections (all safely in conformance with the process for doing so) for the Board.

Just like they were shown at uni.

Don Aitkin writes: "If you want to get rid of management, get rid of the compliance requirements! I'm not sure that that would be a great idea, at least in the long run."

Universities managed to do excellent teaching and research before (pre-John Dawkins) this huge parasitical superstructure took them over, at great cost both to the university budgets and to the performance of the universities' proper function (which was not and should not be either social engineering for the sociology enthusiasts or R&D and staff training for the companies).

To get rid of the compliance requirements it is necessary first to get rid of the class that produces nothing and depends for its existence on inventing ever new compliance requirements. These are the drones who advise unthinking pollies on the shape of legislation and regulation. Yep, university and general public service management.

The ball is in the pollies' - and the voters' - court. The first step is to identify the problem, starting from a recognition that universities are there to do what nations can do and businesses can not.

And yes, restoring what has been destroyed really is a great idea, now, in the medium term and in the long run.

"One simple solution would be for the Federal Govt to cut funding to private schools, not sure of the figure but is in the high billions, particularly to Church run private schools, they have ridiculous fees for students and pay no tax, how is this fair?"

Nice work, Geoff of Perth - a broad, unfounded generalisation should sort things out.

No schools pay tax, other than the GST, so I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with anything. Perhaps we should tax all schools?

I think we overrate the benefits of university degrees. How often I hear no HSC no future, no degree no future. What about the value of apprenticeship trades and garbage collectors - they all contribute to society. Don't we want diversity? We do not need more useless and overeducated and institutionalised people. So many university graduates never pursue their field of study - what a waste. And I see a lot of clones who are unable to look outside the square - I see these young graduates in the workplace and they are hopeless, and tend to have poor people and managing skills, and only go by the book and what they are told to do.

There is a dumbing down at our universities today which I believe has been overtaken by the leftist academics and freedom of speech and academic freedom has been compromised. There is much administrative bureaucracy taking over and the quality of education is going down, particularly with the high intake of foreign students who are actually buying their degrees through fraud. There is a huge reliance on overseas students which is our third biggest export and which I believe is contributing to the problems. I wonder if the Dalia Lama’s unwelcome at Sydney Unversity means anything? Australia has the highest intake of foreign students in the West.

Most people are not meant for academia. I believe it should actually be more elitist (ie like it use to be without the flake) and not so money wasting. Training for nurses should have stayed in the hospitals for real learning.

There is a book out at the moment called "Whackademia" - an account by an insider by the name of Dr Richard Hil which I believe explains this. I have not yet read it.

I have a strong interest in this subject at the moment because I am just about to return to uni after many long years away to do undergraduate study in a a field which is very different to my background in science and engineering.

A couple of things have stood out from the application process: first, the eagerness to acquire mature-aged students is palpable. Could that imply a tacit recognition that school-leavers are poorly prepared for higher education?

Second, the admissions process, while ostensibly selective, has many loopholes that allow entry to those who don't meet the criteria, especially mature applicants. Even competency based training, of which I have done far too much in my career and is essentially a box-ticking exercise for the "trainer" (nobody fails) is a possible qualifying pathway.

This doesn't bode well for the standard of education that can be delivered and I am apprehensive that I will be paying good money to watch people being given remedial education to bring them up to a minimal standard that is still far below what I would regard as reasonable at tertiary level, at least in first year.

In the course I have chosen, which is a three year degree, the first year has only 3 subjects for a total of 10 contact hours and the course handbook recommendation is that students take no more than 2 in the first semester!

When I studied science, first year had 4 subjects in each semester and required about 20 lecture hours plus another 6 in pracs. High level understanding of maths, english and scientific empiricism, as well as basic scientific general knowledge was assumed and it was up to students to keep up. I didn't do so after second year, being naturally lazy and preferring the idea of making money to sitting in a lecture theatre. That was my choice, but I still respect the commitment and application needed to acquire the genuine skills and deep understanding of the subject that such a course of study imparts.

I was truly gobsmacked to see how much things have changed.