John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since the 1990s there have been many steps taken to develop the Australian private higher education system so that private institutions can compete with the long-established public universities. Private and public providers became subject to Australian Universities Quality Agency audits from the commencement of that organisation and students enrolled at a private higher education provider have been given access to FEE-HELP. Private providers can become self-accrediting institutions like universities, and more recently both private and public providers have been regulated by the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency. According to the Council of Private Higher Education, this has resulted in about eight to nine per cent of total enrolment in higher education being in the private sector. Education is now the third largest earner, second behind mining exports, for Australia, and private providers have played their part in this.

The name 'university' is a protected name. The Bradley report sets out ways that private providers could aspire to university status. Thus far only one institution—the former Melbourne College of Divinity—has been able to achieve that goal, despite enthusiasm in some quarters for the so-called 'teaching universities'. Academics in Australia have always associated quality universities with substantial research performance, a factor recognised in the Bradley report.

The problem for all private higher education providers at the moment is that, apart from the distant goal of university status of some type, there is no immediate reward or incentive for developing the research capacity which is the recognised mark of any quality higher education institution. Put another way: there is very little that distinguishes the best private providers from those that barely meet registration and accreditation standards. The current system is good at setting minimum standards for private higher education, but provides little to encourage excellence.

One obvious way to encourage excellence is to reward research performance—not by an entitlement to more funds but by opening competition for research funds to those private institutions that have been judged capable of offering research higher degrees. These institutions have been judged to have the research capability in the fields in which they offer these degrees. Not surprisingly, the public universities have resisted such competition from the private sector institutions, but it is difficult to see anything other than self-interest motivating this opposition if it is a competition based on excellence. One would hope that competition from private providers might further lift research performance across the whole sector.

Let us now turn to the experience of the Australian College of Theology. The ACT is the largest provider of theology graduates in Australia. The college has 1,450 equivalent full-time students or around 3,300 students spread across 18 affiliated colleges throughout Australia. Of these students, 3.5 per cent, or around 88 students, are enrolled in higher degrees by research. Sixty are enrolled in doctoral degrees. These students receive no research scholarships to pay fees or stipends. That is outrageous.

If these same students went to a public university or one of the few private universities with access to the Research Training Scheme they would likely have their fees paid. The cost of funding these students would be minimal, less than $1 million annually, even if all were enrolled full time. The ACT has been assessed twice by AUQA, both with exemplary outcomes, and has been granted the right to accredit its own courses by an accreditation panel of the New South Wales Department of Education, and that status is recognised by TEQSA.

Access to research funding has been raised with the former Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, Senator Chris Evans. He praised the efforts of the ACT but declined to provide access to table B of the Higher Education Support Act 2003, which would have given qualified ACT students the chance to compete for research funds. In other words, the ACT has hit a brick wall in its efforts to improve its own quality.

As a private, fee-paying institution the ACT simply cannot compete with the government provided financial assistance for research available to research degree students enrolled in those institutions listed in table B of the HESA. The ACT does not necessarily need to be listed on table B of the HESA, but it needs some way that it can compete on an even playing field with other institutions that are self-accrediting and are deemed capable of offering higher degrees by research. I believe such an opportunity for research students in the ACT should be available to all research degree students in private higher education institutions.