Exclusive: Grattan Institute director says claim in higher education ad that about half of fees would be paid by government is ‘not particularly meaningful’ because of wide individual variations

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The government’s advertising campaign on higher education includes claims that cannot be verified and are not useful, says an expert who has previously advised Christopher Pyne about university policy.



The education minister launched a multimillion-dollar taxpayer-funded “information campaign” in December, shortly after the Senate blocked his bill to deregulate university fees and cut course subsidies by an average of 20%.

Pyne reintroduced the legislation before the summer recess and will attempt to win over crossbench senators early this year.

The Department of Education told Guardian Australia it stood by the accuracy of the advertising material, after Labor submitted an official complaint disputing the line that the government would “continue to pay a big share, around half, of your undergraduate course fees”.

Andrew Norton, the higher education program director at the Grattan Institute and the co-author of a report to government last year on the demand-driven funding system, questioned the 50% average funding claim.

Norton said the legislation would allow universities to “set whatever student charge the market will pay” but the government subsidy was a fixed dollar-amount, so the funding split could vary widely.

And he said the discussion of the average funding split was “not particularly meaningful in the first place”.

Norton said the share paid by students and the federal government already varied widely depending on the discipline in which they enrolled.

“This is, I think, not very useful information to have in the public realm,” he told Guardian Australia. “Even if it’s true on average, it’s not particularly useful to any individual student.

“At the moment it’s probably a little over 40% paid by students and the government is expecting that will increase by 10 percentage points [after the bill passes] but they haven’t released any of the underlying modelling on fees that might support that.

“I would expect fees, particularly at the Group of Eight universities, to go up a fair bit, and that cost would lead to students paying a significantly larger share of the total funding rate.”

Only two universities have so far published their post-deregulation fee plans, but Norton said even when the other institutions revealed their intentions, the overall average funding split would depend on factors such as the pattern of enrolments.

Norton said the government’s decision to communicate its reform plans in this way were “a shame”, but he argued university vice-chancellors should also tell a “compelling story” about what they would provide students in return for the extra fees.

“If the government said that on average it will continue to pay tuition subsidies of more than $8,000 a student, and that total [annual] spending [on the commonwealth grant scheme] would be well over $6bn, they would be on safer ground on the broader political issue of supporting higher education,” he said.

“For direct student communication, only more specific support levels are meaningful, depending on what course they are thinking of doing.”

Labor’s higher education spokesman, Kim Carr, wrote to the Department of Finance chief on 9 December outlining his concerns with the advertising, saying fee information published by universities showed that students could pay up to 90% in some cases.

The department quickly forwarded the letter to the Department of Education secretary, Lisa Paul, who originally certified the campaign as complying with advertising guidelines.

The department’s media unit told Guardian Australia on Wednesday: “The government stands by the accuracy of advertising material. The government anticipates under the proposed changes, on average, students will pay around half of their course fees, of which they will be able to defer the cost of their fees through Hecs.”

The department did not respond directly to a question asking how the government could make a reliable statement about the likely funding split, given that it would be up to universities to set the fees and only two institutions had announced their proposed fee structures.

Carr said he was yet to receive a formal response to his complaint, but it would be impossible in a deregulated system for the government to claim “a preordained percentage”.

“It’s always interesting that they respond to the press before they do to correspondence from members of parliament,” he said.

“Based on what the department has told the Guardian, we’ll take the matter to the auditor general and we look forward to their explanation before a Senate committee.

“There is a fundamental contradiction between the principles of deregulation, where the government doesn’t set the fees, and the claim that 50% of the fee will be covered by government support. It’s just illogical.”

Carr said he was confident parliament would reject the government’s package a second time, and argued the advertising campaign had the effect of reducing support.

Last month, Pyne’s office said the advertising was part of an “information campaign focusing on the facts” and would “help to counter any myths and misconceptions about the current higher education system and raise awareness of Hecs”.

The minister’s spokesman said feedback from prospective students at tertiary events indicated “a consistent lack of understanding of Australia’s current higher education system, in particular the status of Hecs”.