Last year the feds announced average costs of teaching university subjects, based on research by consultants Deloitte. Reviews weren’t mixed – some experts were outright appalled

As Vin Massaro from the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, put it, “whether the Deloitte report is an accurate reflection of reality is contestable,” (CMM July 15 2020).

And now the MCSHE is going to have a look, partnering with those wonkiest of university cost wonks the Pilbara Group, “to provide a stronger evidence base” for when the Commonwealth again looks at the costs they pay universities to teach specific subjects.

The project team will use anonymised data from 11 universities “to determine the full costs of teaching” sub-disciplines in engineering and allied health. There will be a bit of work in this to do more than Deloitte. As Professor Massaro pointed out in CMM, “a single national average graph for engineering cannot take into account distinctions between sub-specialisation costs, and between those universities that teach most engineering specialisations, and therefore have a higher cumulative cost, and those that might teach only less expensive versions.”