The Government proposes to renew the discipline base for funding higher education. It plans to replace the current system of eight funding clusters of disciplines with one of five clusters. The IRU supports the Government’s changes to the funding tiers which better distribute the available funding than the current dated grouping of disciplines. The proposed clusters:

• weight towards universities teaching more predominantly nursing and education over those with greater load in engineering and sciences;
• hence weight funding back towards those universities less likely to gain most from opening up student charges; and
• encourage universities to move their thinking away from the current funding system towards the potential of the future arrangements.