Australian Financial Review | 13 April 2013
Universities and tertiary students will suffer $2.3 billion of cuts to help fund the Gonski school reforms.
Matt Golding – The Age
In a surprise announcement on Saturday 13 April, Tertiary Education Minister Craig Emerson said the government
has found three areas of “substantial savings” within the higher education portfolio .
He said universities would be asked to make $900 million in “efficiency dividends” over three years, while the 10 per cent discount given to students who pay their university fees upfront would be scrapped, saving $230 million.
A further $1.2 billion will be saved by requiring students to pay back start-up scholarships once they enter the workforce and an earnings threshold is reached.
The savings measures were vital to pay for the government’s national school improvement plan, which Dr Emerson said was a Labor priority.
The measures would also ensure that fiscal position of the federal budget was sustainable over the long term, he said.
In an ideal world where there were no fiscal constraints, maybe these sorts of policies have been sustainable. But they are not sustainable where we are implementing a once in a generation opportunity to make sure that every young child in Australia gets a high quality education.
