Regional paper misses the big picture

With its focus restricted to funding, the federal government, via its discussion paper on regional loadings, has missed a timely opportunity to thoroughly examine higher education in rural and regional areas, according to experts in the field. Furthermore, the discussion paper is based on a presumption that the only game in town is to increase the number of students from regional and regional areas - a noble enough ambition - but in so doing has overlooked other critical aspects of regional higher education provision. "The terms of reference are too narrow; they are about funding only. So the...