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.