Expand CSPs to TAFEs, private colleges, says Go8

TAFEs should enjoy the same funding arrangements as universities when they deliver higher education qualifications, experts believe - but they had better not hold their breath. Australia's elite universities and the federal government's skills advisory body believe the government should include TAFEs and private colleges in the new demand-driven funding system for higher education, a Melbourne conference heard late last month. Group of Eight policy director Mike Teece said commonwealth-supported places (CSPs) should be made available through a wider range of providers because the students of the future would need "different types of courses taught in different ways by different kinds of providers". "A greater role for TAFEs and ultimately private providers in higher education would be a very good thing in terms of competition and broader choice," he told the Interconnected Tertiary Education conference. "TAFEs are widespread; they're easily accessible; they can integrate work and learning more easily than some universities; and they lack some of the overhead costs that universities carry." Teece said the Bradley review had regarded the uncapped system, which is due to start next year, as just the first phase of a process of partial deregulation and expansion aimed at developing a more open and integrated tertiary education system. "It's not only that demand will be bigger, it will also be more diverse - with a wider range of interests, needs and levels of academic preparation than were typical in the past." And he said "more liberalised, demand-driven and consistent funding of CSPs" could help address skills mismatches by allowing institutions to be more agile in responding to labour market demands. Skills Australia chief executive Robin Shreeve said the integrated tertiary sector should feature a level playing field in funding, "so that people make the choice on the basis of what's good for them - not what's most advantageous in terms of how you pay your HECS back". But Shreeve said the VET sector needed to be realistic, given the government's intention to eliminate the budget deficit within a few years. "If we're going to equalise funding between the sectors, it's not going to happen tomorrow, this week [or even] this year. It should be a long-term aspiration, in the same way as it should be a long-term aspiration to meet skill needs." Shreeve noted that it was "always difficult" for the VET sector. "When you look at the national reports, it used to be that the less you spent per ASCH [annual student contact hour] was good. In every other sector, the more you spent per student was good." The director of policy and stakeholder engagement with TAFE Directors Australia, Pam Caven, said next year's system would not be very different to current arrangements as far as a level playing field was concerned. "CSPs ought to apply to TAFE institutes that are offering the same qualifications as the universities," she said. "At the moment there are only two qualifications where that happens - nursing and early childhood development. It's inequitable for TAFE students to be paying full fees, when that's not the case in universities." John Scott, managing director of C.Y. O'Connor College in Western Australia, said regional loading should be part of the conversation about a level playing field. He said the regional loading in his state reached 50 per cent for some secondary schools, but only about 9 per cent for higher education - and somewhere between for VET. The Bradley report recommended that the regional loading for higher education should be scrapped altogether, he added. Teece said loadings should be addressed by the base funding review, but noted most universities had received regional loading under old arrangements. "A more generous but more targeted system would have been more effective for regional institutions and students," he said. Caven said some states were already working on this, with the Victorian government committing to a new Regional Partnerships Facilitation Fund - although the state opposition claims it's unfunded. But Shreeve said "regional" depended on the context. He said that during his recent stint in the UK, London colleges had received a 20 per cent loading over the rest of the country. "It's more expensive to deliver in a capital city than a regional area - but regional in the UK and regional in WA mean two quite different things," he said.