Page 1966 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 14 May 2013
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This morning I met with the vice-chancellors of both the University of Canberra and the Australian National University to discuss the higher education agenda going forward. So it is timely that this MPI is on the notice paper today. There is no doubt that universities will feel the pinch from the reduction in federal funding that has been announced, and which presumably will be reflected in the federal budget released tonight.
In my discussions with the University of Canberra, they are already moving to deal with that efficiency dividend. Whilst it will not be a cut in funding to them, it is certainly less growth money than they were anticipating. But both universities, I think, are positioned well. They are working hard to continue to attract new students. They acknowledge that their business plan cannot rely entirely on government assistance, that they as vice-chancellors need to be constantly examining the competitive environment that they now work in and operate in and look at how they leverage dollars coming into the university through those different processes.
We had a good discussion this morning in terms of some of the priority areas to investigate over the next three years. We had discussions around the role of international students—the role of both international students as perhaps postgraduate students, year 11 and 12 international students or senior secondary international students and also the role of the children of international students and their access to particular services here in the ACT.
I guess the commitment that we have made as a group is to work together to make sure that the decisions we take as a government are supporting the directions that they are going as universities and that, where we can, we work together and leverage the resources that we will all put into promoting Canberra as a university city and a great education destination when we make decisions about those particular policies. For us it will be around study Canberra.
We have also considered the idea of an education delegation. The advice from the vice-chancellors today was that that should look at countries such as China and India as the places where we could coordinate our effort. We have agreed to meet again to take the next decisions that are required. But the reason I am the Minister for Higher Education—and this is the first time we have had a Minister for Higher Education—is because I want to drive this portfolio and make sure that we are doing everything we can to support the growth of the university sector and the role that it plays in our local economy.
We have done the work through the Learning Capital Council. We have made commitments through study Canberra. It is now time to get on and deliver and set some reasonable targets about what we expect we can achieve over the next two to three years in improving international students, but also look at the role we play in the region and also the decisions that local students take about their education destination. If they are leaving Canberra, why are they leaving Canberra, particularly if we offer the same course that they are leaving Canberra to go and study interstate.
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