Decades of declining public funding for universities and the increasing corporatisation of the sector has further eroded working conditions for staff and the quality of education for students, according to a new report.
Of the 1,002 respondents in the report by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, 83% said they were concerned universities’ focus on profit was undermining education standards.“The long-term underfunding of universities inevitably undermines the quality of instruction, the quality of university jobs and the quality of a university degree,” said Jim Stanford, one of the report’s authors and the director of the Centre for Future Work. “Our polling results show Australians know it.
The report said federal funding for universities from 1995 to 2021 – excluding government-funded Help loans which are later repaid by students – has declined by $6.5bn, which equates to 46.5% of current higher education funding. Tuition fees account for 51% of total funding for universities compared with the OECD average of 23.3%, and the average Help debt has doubled since 2008, from about $13,000 to almost $25,000 in 2022.