Australian Politics
Reforms needed for Australian universities -- but what reforms?
There seems to be an underlying goal in the article below to get more young people into universities. But it coud be argued that FEWER students should go to universities. There is much more demand for tradesmen than there is for (say) social science graduates. And the tradesmen often end up paid more.
Additionally, the emphasis on getting students from poorer backgrouds into university may well be a waste in many cases. Such students will often drop out, having achieved nothing.
Admission should be based solely on ability criteria, from senior exam results to IQ scores. The "equity" goals can be achieved by giving financial support to able students from poor backgrounds. But the demonstrated ability must be there or there is no point.
What I am suggesting is not blue sky. It is exactly what the old Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme introduced by Bob Menzies in 1951 did. I benefited from it in the '60s. I was a smart kid from a poor background and sailed through my tertiary studies with that assistance. Of the seven justices of the High Court of Australia, none was the child of a university graduate. All but one were Commonwealth scholars.
Universities are engines of the economy, producing the research and workforce that help grow GDP. But the idea of who universities are for needs to change, says federal Education Minister Jason Clare. More than half of all jobs in Australia will need higher education qualifications by 2050, compared with 36 per cent today, according to analysis released this week in the interim report of the landmark accord review of universities. That means about twice as many people will need to go to university – including students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and the regions who typically haven’t considered tertiary education as an option.
Yet the higher education sector itself is in crisis, propped up by international student fees after decades of government funding cuts, with a heavily casualised workforce and, increasingly, experts say, an excessively corporatised executive. Some warn Australian universities have lost sight of students in their scramble to stay competitive with elite institutions around the world.
To succeed, they’ve had to get bigger. The rise of the homogenous mega-university means institutions are becoming more like “supermarkets for credentials” at the cost of specialisation, according to RMIT University’s principal adviser in institutional research, Angel Calderon.
The days of university as a transformational experience are fading, says Xavier Dupe of the National Student Union. “And it started before COVID. Universities are pushing students through a degree factory and increasingly gearing study around the priorities of big business.”
What’s needed, everyone agrees, is a complete overhaul.
Big ‘spiky’ change
The accord’s interim report lays out five priority moves to jumpstart reforms: all Indigenous students will be guaranteed a Commonwealth-supported university place when they are accepted for study; 34 new study hubs will be established in outer suburbs and regional areas; and university governing boards will be overhauled to install more people with higher education experience. A key part of the former Coalition government’s controversial Job Ready Graduates Package – which was lashed by the accord panel as disadvantaging poorer students – will be dismantled, meaning students who fail more than 50 per cent of subjects will no longer lose their Commonwealth place. And government funding agreements, which had only been guaranteed until the end of this year, will be extended into 2025.
But radical reform calls for radical ideas, says Clare, and the accord panel has also laid out a raft of “big spiky” ones that could shape the sector’s next steps ahead of its final report in December. “That’s why there’s an echidna on the front cover,” Clare quipped as the report was handed down.
The review comes at a time when NSW and Victorian universities are almost universally in deficit. The exception is the University of Sydney, which has reported an operating surplus of $1.3 billion over the past two years.
The next six months, says higher education expert Andrew Norton, is where the debate could get divisive. Some ideas flagged are especially spiky, including a proposed levy on the almost $10 billion universities make annually from international student fees, that could be used to cover gaps elsewhere such as research funding and student housing. Group of Eight universities that earn the most from international students have already slammed the idea as a tax on high-achieving institutions, even as many regional institutions voice interest.
University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Professor Duncan Maskell questions how such a levy could be fairly applied. “It costs us a lot of money to attract international students, we then use a big chunk of their fees on teaching them or building infrastructure for them,” he says. “By the time you factor all that in, there wouldn’t be much left to tax.”
Still, La Trobe University vice-chancellor Professor John Dewar says the levy idea has “a lot of merit”. The sheer scale of the changes needed demands bold moves, he says, welcoming the accord panel’s willingness to “pressure test and wargame” such ideas now to avoid unintended consequences later. For example, “a levy could lead to the cost being passed onto the students and that’d be a shame”, he says. “It already costs a lot to come here and study.”
Norton says the levy could reinforce the perception of international students as cash cows and potentially drive away a key source of revenue for the sector. What’s clear though is that there is a resource divide between many universities and, according to the accord, universities are incentivised to maximise their international student cohort, blowing out class sizes. “This can be detrimental to the student experience,” the report says.
Rich university, poor university
Reforms down the years have tried to close the equity gap and failed. Now, the accord panel says, reaching parity requires 60 per cent more students from low socio-economic backgrounds going to university, 53 per cent more from regional areas and about 11 per cent more First Nations students.
If we’re going to get there, Dewar says, “we need to pull every lever. We haven’t really had a plan for higher education in this country. We need targets.”
Clare, who is also plotting big reforms in early education and schools, says students are being failed before they reach university. Those from poorer backgrounds are three times more likely to fall behind in school and only 15 per cent go on to get degrees. “Six years ago, 83 per cent of students in public schools finished year 12,” he told the Press Club this week. “Last year it was 76 per cent. And all of this is happening at a time when finishing school is so much more important than it was in my mum and dad’s day, or mine ... If you’re a young Indigenous bloke today, you’re more likely to go to jail than university.”
These grim figures are why Norton still sees reaching equal university participation as a “pipedream” until school results and year 12 completion rates go up. In NSW, one in three public school students are now dropping out of school. “We should be realistic about what’s achievable,” says Norton.
Equity targets have been missed before, concedes Dewar, but he senses a real momentum in the sector this time, something he hopes is matched by more serious funding and policy. An independent tertiary commission to guide the reform, another spiky idea flagged by the accord, may well be needed given the amount of taxpayer money involved. “They need to hold universities accountable for targets,” says Dewar. “They need to assure the taxpayer that the results are worth it. In a busy world, no matter how much appetite the sector might have to do something, and it does have the appetite, if you’re not actually going to have your feet held to the fire over it, then it may slip.”
A second national university, this time focusing on the regions and based on the University of California model, is another idea flagged worth a discussion, Dewar says. “Under the UC model, their campuses all have a degree of autonomy, and are big unis in their own right, but they benefit from some aggregation of function that are expensive for each university to run separately.” Others question whether a federated model is needed.
Clare has said Australia would likely need more universities and new kinds of institutions, including more specialised models, to cater to the coming demand.
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Lesbian domestic violence proves it’s not just a male problem
You may recall the campaign running on national television a few years ago. The ads were part of the Australian government’s campaign designed ‘to help break the cycle of violence against women and their children’.
It suggested that all of the perpetrators of domestic violence were strictly male. For example, the Albanese Labor government is presently funding a range of new initiatives through this budget to help deliver the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-32.
But what about domestic violence against men?
I have no intention of minimising the problem of domestic violence against women and children. One must speak out loud and clear about violence against anyone regardless of age, gender, and sexual orientation.
However, it is a myth that domestic violence is all about men hurting women in heterosexual relationships. Domestic violence is also a ‘silent epidemic’ in lesbian relationships.
As the studies of lesbian violence demonstrate, women are capable of being as violent as men in intimate relationships. Violence among same-sex couples is apparently two to three times more common than among married heterosexual couples.
For example, about a decade ago the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reported on the lifetime prevalence of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, focusing for the first time on victimisation by sexual orientation.
It found a victimisation prevalence of 43.8 per cent for lesbians, making it the second most affected group after bisexual women (61.1 per cent), ahead of bisexual men (37.3 per cent), heterosexual women (35 per cent), heterosexual men (29 per cent) and homosexual men (26 per cent).
A new study from Rutgers University has found a significant increase in domestic violence in lesbian relationships. The study is entitled, Sociodemographic characteristics, depressive symptoms, and increased frequency of intimate partner violence among LGBTQ people in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. It appears in the April 2023 (Volume 35, Issue 2) of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services.
The above study used a survey of 1,090 LGBTQ+ individuals. It found that bisexual women, followed by lesbians, are the most likely to suffer from all forms of intimate partner abuse. The same study also found that, in cases of severe violence, the numbers are 49 per cent of bisexual women, 29.4 per cent of lesbian women, and 16.4 per cent of homosexual men compared to 23.6 per cent of heterosexual women and 13.9 per cent of heterosexual men.
That violence comes out more frequently in lesbian relationships both as resistance and as aggression should put aside our preconceptions of gender socialisation and roles.
Erin Pizzey set up the first refuge for battered women, in 1971. Her own experience is that women are just as capable of intimate partner abuse, in both the physical and emotional sense, as men. When she opened her refuge for battered women, 62 of the first 100 women to come through the door were as abusive as the men they had left. And when the feminists started demonizing fathers in the early 1970s, she felt morally obliged to state:
‘Women and men are both capable of extraordinary cruelty. … We must stop demonising men and start healing the rift that feminism has created between men and women. This insidious and manipulative philosophy that women are always victims and men always oppressors can only continue this unspeakable cycle of violence. And it’s our children who will suffer.’
Pizzey is part of a growing number of brave experts and scholars trying to set the record straight. Professor Linda Mills, the Ellen Goldberg Professor at New York University, said:
‘Years of research, which mainstream feminism has glossed over or ignored, shows that when it comes to intimate abuse, women are far from powerless and seldom, if ever, just victims. Women are not merely passive prisoners of violent intimate dynamics. Like men, women are frequently aggressive in intimate settings and therefore may be more accurately referred to as “women in abusive relationships” … The studies show not only that women stay in abusive relationships but also that they are intimately engaged in and part of the dynamic of abuse.’
The official figures, however, grossly underestimate the number of female perpetrators of domestic violence. Male victims are reluctant to disclose when they have been abused by women. Culturally, it is still difficult for men to bring these incidents to the attention of the authorities. It does not fit the official narrative.
Frequently men do not conceptualise the physical violence they sustain from their female partners as a crime. As noted by one worker at the charity Abused Men in Scotland (AMIS):
‘The gender role men are given in society means they find it hard to understand and recognise what is happening to them and when they do it is very difficult for them to talk about it. Regularly they begin with: “I am not an abused man” but then go on to tell the most horrendous stories of domestic abuse. Once men go into that downward spiral of control they are robbed of everything – their home, their job, their self-determination.’
Elizabeth Bates, a psychology professor at the Cumbria University (UK), explains that ‘there are a lot of men who have experienced domestic violence and don’t even report it and often don’t tell anybody’.
According to a senior research fellow at the University of South Wales (USW), male victims of domestic violence ‘fear appearing unmanly … and a failure to live up to masculine ideals’. This was the experience of the abused men she has interviewed, ‘who felt that they needed help to get to the root of these feelings’.
Due to the prevailing narrative, men who sustain intimate partner abuse face numerous obstacles. They struggle to locate anti-DV services to assist them. Help lines or shelters are often targeted towards female victims only. The male victim suffers from a complete lack of support.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/lesbian-domestic-violence-proves-its-not-just-a-male-problem
******************************************************Billionaires’ Qld gas deal hinges on controversial price cap, approvals
Surely the Qld government would not be so moronic as to block this
A $1 billion gas field expansion will power a major Queensland manufacturer, in a gas supply deal hailed as securing “long-term local manufacturing” jobs, but it hangs on environmental approvals and the Albanese Government’s controversial gas price cap.
It is part of a deal inked between companies linked to two of Australia’s wealthiest and most influential billionaires, Gina Rinehart’s Senex and Anthony Pratt’s Visy.
Under the deal, Senex’s Atlas gas field expansion in the Surat Basin will supply Visy’s packaging and recycling manufacturing operations in Queensland for 10 years from January 2026.
But, Senex paused its Atlas expansion in December 2022 in the wake of the government’s then temporary gas price cap – which has now been extended until 2025.
It is understood the expansion remains on hold while the company considers the details of the Federal Government mandatory code of conduct, which was released earlier this month.
It is also dependent on its final approvals under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Senex CEO Ian Davies said manufacturers were facing difficulties securing gas, but the Atlas would bring new supply to the market and put downward pressure on prices.
“Having gas for the manufacturing industry is absolutely paramount, and the only way that’s going to stay reliable is for there to be more investment, not less” Mr Davies said.
“More secure and reliable gas supply will help to keep Australian manufacturers in business and tens-of thousands of people in secure, well-paying jobs.”
Visy CEO Mark de Wit said the agreement would underpin the company’s investments in the state. “Visy is proud to be investing $700 million in Queensland and this agreement means we can continue to grow our manufacturing operations,” he said.
Visy is spending about $700 million to upgrade its recycling facility on Gibson Island, which is expected to remove 39,000 tonnes per year of paper and cardboard from landfill.
The value of the deal remains commercial-in-confidence.
Under the mandatory gas code of conduct, the domestic gas prices cap of $12/GJ was extended until at least July 2025, at which point it will be reviewed.
The current end point for the cap is six months before the contract is due to start.
The cap applies to domestically sold gas, not exports, but the government made a concession to industry by allowing gas companies to negotiate exemptions if they commit to increasing domestic supply.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has said capping coal and gas prices has “shielded Australians” from higher power bills and that the code struck the right balance between cost of supply.
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Rent controls will force mum and dad investors to exit
Rent controls are poised to become a major threat to investors as the Victorian government is set to overhaul the state’s property rules.
The spectre of looming rent controls or ‘caps’ has already spooked potential investors nationwide. The Queensland state government introduced new tighter laws for property owners in April.
Property industry groups have warned that any move towards rent control will worsen the national rental crisis as it reduces the supply of available rental stock.
At the same time, a steady exit of property investors from the residential market in recent months could accelerate dramatically if government intervention is added to the mix.
Queensland recently introduced a once a year rule on rent increases while the Victorian government is reportedly looking at rules that will only allow a rental increase once every two years along with further potential caps.
Private investors own the vast majority of Australian rental property. But ‘mum and dad’ owners have been shifting out of the market as rates run higher and long-term returns continue to weaken.
For decades investors operated on the basis their would double their money every seven to ten years, but this rule of thumb was contradicted by a Proptrack report this year which showed it has taken 15 years for prices to double.
Meanwhile rental returns – despite the rental crisis – remain weak in terms of ongoing earnings with yields on term deposit accounts now competing with property income.
Investors who thought they were buying into a ‘market’ were rudely awakened by the rental mortarium that was rushed through during the Covid-19 period.
Having recovered from that period, investors now face a potential new wave of re-regulation.
A newly released report from investment bank Jarden has shown firm evidence that private investors have already been exiting the market.
Against a long-term average figure of 30 per cent, the portion of investors behind new listings has risen to 36 per cent in Melbourne and 40 per cent in Sydney.
Separately, this week the real estate group, Ray White reported a doubling of investor auctions sales.
The exit of a property investors from the market can reduce the amount available to rent as properties revert to owner occupiers.
The immediate effect will be to reduce rental vacancy rates which remain at a severely low level of less than 2 per cent across the major urban centres.
In Brisbane, where there was an exceptionally large volume of interstate landlord sales at the top of the recent cycle in 2021, the city later become the market with the worst vacancy rates in the nation.
A nationwide repeat of the Queensland experience is now on the cards as a range of state governments stand ready to move on the property market in a way that will not improve the terms for investors.
However, in Victoria where Premier Dan Andrews has indicated ‘everything is on the table’ in relation to a plan to overhaul the state’s property system, the issue is set to become acute.
Private property holders in Melbourne endured a price downturn along with Sydney investors in but they have not had the same price bounce back this year – Sydney prices moved more than six cent higher over the year to date while Melbourne prices barely inched higher at 1.1 per cent year to date.
Though renters who have faced double-digit rent increases will be sceptical over the reportedly poor returns in property.
The changing numbers in the rental market means that investors will keep pushing rents higher as their own costs – largely dominated by higher interest rates – continue to escalate.
As the Oxford Economics group reports, “higher interest rates have significantly lifted the mortgage costs for landlords who are keen to balance their cash flow through higher rental incomings – we expect rents to increase 11 per cent in 2023 and 4 per cent in 2024”.
The experience overseas especially in the UK in recent years has been that government intervention coupled with high rates has mean large numbers of mum and dad property investors have thrown in the towel – the same risk is now clearly present in the Australian market.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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