by VICKI THOMSON

The commentary from the Productivity Commission is a damning indictment on the Job Ready Graduate package, which the Go8 has consistently argued has led to perverse outcomes for students and  universities

The package cut overall funding for engineering  – an area of critical shortage – by 16 percent  and at the same time it more than doubled the cost of humanities courses for students.

These students now pay for 93 per cent of the total cost of their degree compared to just 13 per cent in some other courses such as agriculture, forestry studies and fisheries sciences. Under this package, we were effectively funded  less to teach more students – many of whom  will and have paid more for their degree at a time when they can least afford to.

Group of Eight modelling  indicates that by 2024 we will be expected to teach an additional 5000 students but with a $100m decrease in  our base funding thanks to this flawed  policy, which the Commission notes is underpinned by little public information about how  or why certain courses received less or more funding.

JRG also ignored the evidence on which degrees actually lead to employment. People who do humanities degrees and social science degrees get jobs at about exactly the same rate as science graduates with employment rates, covering either full-time or part-time work, for the two groups roughly the same and we know that 17 out of every 20 graduates Go8 graduates were in full time employment in 2021.

The Commission has also highlighted the need to address the issue of research funding. JRG pulled teaching and research funding apart but in doing so it failed to  address the real costs of research. As the universities which undertake 70 percent of all university based research in Australia, the Go8 strongly backs a full economic cost approach to research rather than relying on cross-subsidisation from university discretionary funds, predominantly from international student revenue.”

Vicki Thomson is chief executive of the Group of Eight