Opinion & Commentary
Excessive bureaucracy stifles uni flexibility
Brendan Nelson isn't pleased that, apparently, someone was admitted to a teaching course despite very poor Year 12 results. How can we expect people who did badly at school to become effective school teachers? He promises measures to reduce the likelihood of those who failed at school becoming responsible for the school success of others.
Nelson's example is unlikely to be an isolated case. Regional campuses in Victoria advertise an Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank the equivalent of NSW's Tertiary Entrance Rank or Universities Admission Index in the 50s. Other campuses disguise low scores by enrolling via special entry programs. Many of these students are at the borderline of suitability for higher education. Studies suggest that student performance becomes erratic under an ENTER as high as 80.
Why do universities take people who run a high risk of failing or dropping out?
In part, they want to provide opportunities. Low ENTERs are associated with social and economic disadvantage, and Year 12 results may not reflect underlying ability. Some weak entrants become successful students.
But altruism is not always the explanation. The highly bureaucratic system Nelson created exacerbates the problem he now wants to solve, and does so in multiple ways.
The new funding policies reduce universities' capacity to shift student places from low-demand to high-demand disciplines. Previously, they could shuffle places within their budget if they achieved minimum total student numbers. Now they must meet target enrolments in a dozen funding clusters. Nearly half the clusters contain only one discipline, leaving little room to move. In others, flexibility is heavily constrained. In cluster 6, for instance, increasing health places means cutting built environment places. This is inflexibility No. 1.
Inflexibility No. 2 is distributing new places according to demography rather than demand, a critical variable in determining ENTER scores.
The commonwealth is trying to even out university participation rates of 17- to 25-year-olds between states. Victoria has high participation, so it received few new places despite relatively high demand. This year in Victoria , 74 out of 100 applicants received an offer. Tasmania has low participation, so it received a generous allocation of new places, despite relatively low demand. 85 out of 100 Tasmanian applicants received an offer. Since Tasmania must fill its student quota, it needs to take applicants who would miss out in Victoria . Unsurprisingly, Nelson's teaching course anecdote came from a "Tasmanian student".
Inflexibility No. 3 is that within states and territories the Department of Education is micro-allocating to an extraordinary degree. The funding agreements signed by the commonwealth and the universities in 2004 reveal nearly 400 specific allocations by course and campus, many involving small numbers of student places.
Inflexibility No. 4 is due to arrive next year. The minister has told universities that in future they can't close small specialist courses without the commonwealth's agreement. But if there is little demand the main reason for closing courses lower entry standards are needed to fill places.
In any higher education system, mismatches between supply and demand are inevitable. Universities and applicants have preferences that may not coincide at all, or in the time available between applications and enrolments. But the commonwealth has made the problem worse than it needs to be by micro-managing enrolments.
We are yet to see the detail of how Nelson proposes to ease the low ENTER problem. On existing reports, he will give more capacity for universities to transfer places between courses if their applicants are not good enough. Presumably universities will manipulate minimum entrance requirements to increase flexibility further. In the world of second- or third-best policy in which universities seem trapped, this is better than the status quo.
But the problem is far more serious than just low ENTER scores in some courses. It is the systematic misallocation of places across the full range of student ability. For example, too few high-ENTER students enrol in health-related disciplines because of bureaucratic obstacles. This is as much a concern as low-ENTER students in teaching courses. The system needs a fundamental rethink.
Andrew Norton is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
