It was a quiet budget for education and training but a good night for STEM and medical research.
Student places: There is $28m for 500 new sub degree and enabling course places for rural and regional students. And $14m more for bachelor places in the previously announced study hubs. There is also funding for the states to “arrest the decline in apprenticeships.”
Research infrastructure: “Recognising the importance” of the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap the Government is investing $1.9bn of new money over 12 years. This is on top of space funding, medical research and specific spends on super-computing already announced. The infrastructure spending should mean outlays keep pace with CPI.
Med research: New money includes $240m for a Frontier Science Programme, “to develop innovative medical ideas, research devices and treatment. And the Medical Research Future Fund is projected to reach an extraordinary $20bn in 2020-21.
R&D tax incentive: “Better targeting” will save close to $2bn across the forward estimates, a move which higher education researchers will approve of and entrepreneurs who rely on it will loathe.
Medical training in the bush: The government has not given Charles Sturt and La Trobe universities the medical school they have long-lobbied for. But it has addressed the need for more medical training places in the regions. And to maximise political benefit the feds have expropriated the CSU-LTU name, creating the $94m Murray Darling Medical Schools Network, involving a bunch of medical schools. This is better for the med ed establishment than a new competitor but the bit they will not like is there is no lift in med student places. Student places at the MDMSN will come from the existing schools.
Reaction: Perhaps the uni lobbies are all out of outrage but the response to a budget that did not give much but at least did not take any extra away was on the positive side of polite.
Universities Australia president Margaret Gardner set the tone; “a $393 million boost for major research infrastructure and 500 newly-funded pathway places into university for regional Australians are “a solid down-payment on future economic growth … investing in these facilities is like laying the rail and road networks of the 19th and 20th centuries – it’s productive infrastructure to deliver tomorrow’s discoveries, industries, start-ups and jobs.” Certainly, Professor Gardner added the “good news is tempered by the ongoing university funding freeze,” but she could have gone in much harder.
The National Tertiary Education Union certainly did; “the unanticipated increase in government revenue could have been used to reverse their decision to freeze public investment in future university education and training, president Jeannie Rea said.
But Science and Technology Australia came close to being pleased; “the government has listened to the need to restore support for major science agencies and invest in research infrastructure to position Australia as a leader in global STEM research and innovation. “This is a good budget for science” Andrew Holmes from the Australian Academy of Science said.
And there was realpolitik from the Regional Universities Network with chair Greg Hill saying the “budget emphasis on regional higher education was well-targeted and welcome.”
And you don’t often hear that on budget night from a uni lobby.