It is ten years since the demand driven system for funding university places was announced. The Government wanted to ensure that all Australians had the opportunity to gain the knowledge and skills in the fields that drive them, as the basis for productive contribution to Australia’s future. To mark the tenth anniversary of demand driven funding, the IRU has published a report analysing the system’s key achievements.

The IRU recently published a discussion paper, Towards a tertiary future, outlining our vision for tertiary education in Australia. 

A supplemental paper has now been published by the IRU, digging further into the data round applications, acceptance and completions. 

This includes breakdowns by state, gender, socioeconomic group and metro/non-metro areas. 

The Innovative Research Universities (IRU) has published its contribution to the tertiary debate in a discussion paper titled ‘Towards a Tertiary Future’ (published 21 November 2018). In it, the IRU makes the case for a coherent tertiary education system that ensures each person has the opportunity and incentive to get the vocational and higher education qualifications, skills and knowledge to which they aspire.

The IRU’s regional presence is strong within the health sciences, teaching 26% of the nation’s health students who are taught from regional based campuses. We teach roughly similar proportions of the nation’s health students in regional based campuses at the doctoral-level (26%), postgraduate coursework (31%) and bachelor-level (25%).

The Report of the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee into the Government’s higher education package sheds little new light but it does include a notably dodgy chart that undermines, not supports, the Minister’s rhetoric about higher education funding growing faster than Australia’s gross domestic product. Total higher education funding is increasing. If we want Read more

IRU members oppose the Government’s Higher Education package. It does not address the key issue of ensuring needed level of resources for universities while effectively balancing Government investment with student contributions. Students need better resourced universities, not to pay more for less. The Government case that universities can sustain further reductions in revenue rests on Read more

The decision to open university undergraduate education to all interested and capable students is intended to ensure that all Australian have the opportunity to gain the knowledge and skills in the fields that drive them, as the basis for productive contribution to Australia’s future.  The decision intentionally expanded the number of higher education graduates. It Read more

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the demand driven system, the data continues to show the positive benefits of a model steered by student agency and university commitment to access. The IRU regularly monitors data on the discipline choice of students.  We now have sufficient figures on course completions to extend the analysis. The Read more

Andrew Norton and Ittima Cherastidtham of the Grattan Institute have released Shared interest: a universal loan fee for HELP.  It proposes that the Government introduce a common 15% loan fee for each element of the Higher Education Loans Program (HELP). The proposal needs to be taken seriously to think through its implications.  Mr Norton is Read more

This article by IRU Executive Director, Conor King was published in The Australian newspaper 11 May 2016 The federal government’s flagship equity program has never been allowed to become what it was meant to be. When the latest round of cuts hit, the Higher Education Participation Program will have been turned back into the small, Read more