Message to lobbyists: accentuate your affirmatives

Rather than crying poor, tertiary education leaders should “spruik” the job creation impacts of education infrastructure projects, according to the chair of the Education Investment Fund (EIF) Advisory Board, Philip Clark.cts from infrastructure schemes like the EIF could generate massive payoffs in both dollars and jobs. For starters, he said, there was co-investment leverage, with EIF grants extracting add-on commitments from institutions and often industry and state governments. He said the $580 million allocated through last year’s first round of the EIF had unlocked a total $1.6 billion in investments over three years, including $1.35 billion of direct construction funding.