Image: Innovative Research Universities
Australian Labor’s reset of higher education policy is ambitious but incremental, says Paul Harris
As ministers settle in, what will a UK Labour government mean for higher education and research? Recent history in Australia can provide a point of comparison. Here, the Labor Party regained power in May 2022 after almost a decade of conservative coalition government.
In opposition, Australian Labor committed to an Australian Universities Accord—a new partnership between government, universities and the community. Once elected, it kicked this off with the largest review of the university system in 15 years, with students and staff given a seat at the table. In parallel, the new government also commissioned an independent review of the Australian Research Council (ARC), the first since its founding in 2001.
Through two waves of expansion, in the 1970s and 1990s, the Australian university system extended the benefits of higher education and research to communities across the country. The members of the Innovative Research Universities network trace their history back to these expansions.
Labor’s education minister, Jason Clare, has made equity his top priority. Going into the Accord review, IRU identified three trends that threaten this objective, making universities less representative of their communities.
Boosting participation
First, while higher education participation overall has increased in Australia, there are still significant gaps for students from underrepresented groups.
Second, expansion has turned into concentration, with students, research and resources increasingly found in a few large metropolitan universities.
Third, a growing focus on the private benefits of education, justifying increased tuition fees, and on research commercialisation over broader public benefits, risks privatising what should be public goods.
The final report of the review panel—led by Mary O’Kane, a computer scientist, former vice-chancellor and government adviser—was released in February this year. It made 47 detailed recommendations across a range of areas.
Asked to sum up the review, O’Kane summed up the review’s goal as “growth for skills through equity”—that is, increasing participation in post-secondary education by focusing on underrepresented students, and so giving the future workforce the skilled graduates it will need.
‘Strategic examination’
This May’s federal budget contained the government’s first response to the review. This included changes to student loan indexation to reduce debt, fee-free courses to prepare students for undergraduate study, a National Student Ombudsman, and paid placements on courses where work experience is compulsory, such as nursing and teaching.
The budget also featured bigger—and as yet unfunded—structural reforms, such as an independent Australian Tertiary Education Commission and a “managed growth” funding model for universities, with “needs-based” allocation of government support.
On university research, the government has not so far adopted any of the review’s many recommendations, which included major funding reform and a greater focus on the uptake and impact of university research. Instead, it has announced a “strategic examination” of government support for R&D, which will take place over the next 18 months.
But Clare has acted on recommendations from the review of the ARC, getting legislation through parliament earlier this year to strengthen the funder’s governance. A new, independent ARC board has been appointed and a revised ARC Act limits the minister’s power to veto individual research grants.
The act also codifies the ARC’s responsibility to “evaluate the excellence, impact and depth of Australian research”. While we are still waiting to see the detail, this will mean a new version of the Excellence in Research for Australia and the Engagement and Impact Assessment exercises—Australia’s version of the Research Excellence Framework.
What to expect
So what have the last two years taught us about universities under Labor?
First, a new administration doesn’t necessarily change things inherited from its predecessor that many might expect them to. In Australia, these include the proliferation of numerous policies on research security and foreign interference, as well as the Job-ready Graduates package, which skewed tuition fees across disciplines, and which O’Kane’s review recommended scrapping.
Second, a big review can be useful to reveal issues, build consensus and highlight the interdependencies between different areas of policy. But it can’t do everything—hence, for example, the Australian government’s follow-on review of research, along with separate new processes for policy on international education.
Finally, it is possible to reset the relationship between government and universities. We will have a new, independent commission, and the focus on equity is welcome. But big questions remain, such as whether students or the government will pay for an expanded system, and how to balance university autonomy with a more managed system featuring increased government intervention.
We don’t yet have a full accord between universities and government, but the Australian experience shows just how much can happen in a government’s first two years.
Paul Harris is executive director of Innovative Research Universities