In the colourfully put view of the University of Sydney vice-chancellor Dr Michael Spence, Australian universities "tax the poor families of Sichuan to subsidise the education of kids who went to Kings to become doctors and charge people a lot of money. That's immoral."

The comments came on Thursday in a spirited debate among five vice-chancellors over the merits - or otherwise - of the demand-driven system and the policy morass that is higher education in Australia in 2016.

The only point of general agreement: that the university sector is chronically underfunded.

Dr Spence, whose university sits with the research-intensive Group of Eight or "sandstone" universities, argued that the universities' heavy reliance on full-fee-paying international students was the result of a broken funding system that was putting significant downward pressure on quality - even, apparently, at his prestigious institution.