The Innovative Research Universities  network’s budget submission calls on the government to “reinstate sensible funding for higher education to meet future need”, warning, “the decision to cap university Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding at its 2017 level means that universities will steadily reduce the number of students enrolled to avoid allowing the investment per student to drop below the level needed for quality student learning.”

And if the government will not do this IRU argues it should annually index each university’s funding cap and increase it by population growth of the 17-18 year-old school leaver cohort.  As things stand, the lobby laments; “there is little logic to linking an annual increase in the CGS funding cap to population growth, implying a means to maintain pace in the number of students with population, without any indexation mechanism that maintains the value of the capped amount.”

The IRU also urges the government to reverse December’s cuts to research block grants and restore Australian Research Council funding to the 2014 “high point.” And while it suggests addressing problems in VET, “need not involve higher education,” the IRU suggests, “a wide-ranging review process to establish a tertiary education wide strategy for the 2020s and beyond.”