The Innovative Research Universities new budget submission focuses on the undergraduate funding legislation

The IRU repeats proposals in its submission to Education Minister’s bill (CMM August 18). It calls for adjusting student charges in the bill to cap the maximum at the present highest rate, funded by lifting the lowest in the draft legislation. It recommends a floor on Commonwealth payments per students so universities do not receive less than they now do now.

It advocates “additional growth places” to meet demographically driven demand for UG places, expected at the end of the decade. And it wants an end to “micro-controls” on universities deciding what students to enrol which are in Mr Tehan’s bill.

The lobby also wants the budget to include COVID-19 support for research, to cover until Minister Tehan’s funding model, now being developed, is in-place.

“University research capacity will be permanently damaged if long-term funding reforms are not coupled with short-term support to bridge the looming funding gaps between recent levels of research and that the future can sustain.  We need to flatten the curve of university revenue reduction across 2020 and 2021 to keep research going.”