Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome this opportunity to speak on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007. Any debate about education policy is important, so it is good to be able to participate in this debate tonight. As Labor identified earlier in the year in our call for an education revolution in Australia, education is the key to future prosperity. We are currently in danger of falling behind our competitors in the rest of the world without a significant investment in all levels of our education system—in early childhood education, primary and secondary schooling, vocational education, universities and research. Sadly, this bill does not signal a move by the government towards these national imperatives. However, Labor will not oppose the bill, despite some reservations, as outlined in the second reading amendment moved by the shadow minister.

This bill does a number of things. It revises the maximum funding amounts provided under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide funding to support the implementation of the research quality framework. The Higher Education Support Act will be amended to reflect the changes to the national protocols for higher education approval processes. The bill introduces a number of measures relating to the administration of the higher education loan program and arrangements for Commonwealth supported students. In addition, there are a number of other minor amendments to improve the operation of the Higher Education Support Act.

I will turn first to the changes that this bill makes to the national protocols. The existing national protocols for higher education approval processes were first approved by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in 2000. Those protocols regulate recognition of new universities, the operation of foreign universities in Australia and the accreditation of courses offered by higher education institutions. The protocols agreed by the two levels of government are an important safeguard of quality in the higher education sector within Australia. These protocols were reviewed in July 2006 and amended by agreement. The five protocols which were agreed upon in 2006 are:

Protocol A Nationally agreed criteria and approval processes for all higher education institutions

Protocol B Criteria and processes for the registration of non self-accrediting higher education institutions and the accreditation of their higher education course/s

Protocol C Criteria and processes for awarding self-accrediting authority to higher education institutions other than universities

Protocol D Criteria and processes for establishing Australian universities

Protocol E Criteria and processes for overseas higher education institutions seeking to operate in Australia

The new protocols contain some significant changes to the current arrangements. For example, there is provision for a wider range of universities, including specialist institutions conducting teaching and research in one or two fields of study only. And institutions other than universities will be able to seek authority to accredit their own courses where they demonstrate a strong track record in quality assurance.

While the new protocols retain the understanding of universities as research based institutions, there is scope in the changes to allow for greater liberalisation of the sector by facilitating the establishment of specialist universities and university colleges. This liberalisation and increased competition within the sector can bring benefits but it absolutely has to be supported by the protocols’ other function, which is to set high standards for higher education providers and protect Australia’s reputation as a provider of high-quality education. We need to be able to give that guarantee to our own students, and it is also vital that Australia maintains its standards and reputation for quality education in the global marketplace for international students.

This market is essential to public institutions which have been starved of Commonwealth funding over the last decade. The funding shortfall per student has recently been valued by the University of Melbourne’s vice-chancellor, Glyn Davis, as approximately $1,200 per student. Thus, the income from the $10 billion international student market is essential to the ability of higher education institutions to continue to provide world-class courses for all their students, both domestic and international.

These new protocols have been scheduled to take effect from 31 December 2007, following the agreement of the Commonwealth and state governments to legislate to that effect. Accordingly, Labor supports the implementation of these five protocols. However, the guidelines underpinning the protocols have yet to be formally discussed and, in fact, are due for discussion at the April meeting of MCEETYA. It is concerning to see the Howard government attempting to set the guidelines through this legislation without waiting for the consensus of MCEETYA. This demonstrates yet again the arrogance of this government, as they have decided to act unilaterally on the details of how to achieve this policy without the planned MCEETYA consultation in spite of the fact that its implementation is reliant on the cooperation of every state government in the country. The strength of these protocols has been their development and acceptance by all governments and it is a shame to see the Howard government treating that process of consultation through MCEETYA in such an offhand way.

There is similar evidence that this legislation has been rushed and poorly thought through when it comes to the parts relating to the research quality framework. This bill revises the maximum funding amounts allowable under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 in order to provide revenue for the establishment of the Howard government’s research quality framework—the RQF—starting in 2007. Specifically, the bill provides $40.8 million for two programs to assist universities and other higher education institutions with the implementation of the RQF. Given the concerns raised by the education sector it is important to evaluate the framework when debating the appropriation of its funding.

The RQF for publicly funded research will measure the quality and, as the government tells us, the impact of research. The results of that exercise will provide the basis for distributing research funding to universities. The recommended RQF model requires 13 panels of 12 reviewers each to assess research quality and impact scores on the basis of the evidence submitted. Each of the panels must comprise of a minimum of three international assessors and three end users. End users must come from industry, business, the public sector or community organisations and must be persons who can legitimately verify claims of impact.

The first step of this complex process is that institutions nominate eligible research groups and researchers for inclusion. The research groups need to provide evidence portfolios in order to be assessed by the panels. These include four best research outputs per researcher, a full list of research outputs and statements of impact that can be verified by qualified end users of the research. The evaluation of the panels is then reported to the minister on the basis of research groups, not individual researchers, for the allocation of funding.

However, logistical concerns have been raised with regard to the operation of this system. According to data compiled by Deakin University, there are over 36,000 full-time academic staff in the university sector, of whom 44 per cent hold teaching and research or research only appointments. It is likely that about 12,000 of these are RQF eligible—that is, they each produce at least four research outputs in five years. It stands to reason, therefore, that each of these staff will submit four research outputs in an RQF assessment, resulting in 48,000 items requiring assessment. If there are 13 assessment panels with 12 members each, and each item is seen by two panel members, a panel member will have to assess over 600 items. The load on a panel member is thus the equivalent of examining each of eight to 10 higher doctorate theses twice, once for quality and once for impact. This is a big ask. For an expert in a field to examine one such thesis against well-known criteria in no more than a week would be unusually fast.

Thus, it is possible that the assessors will have limited time to make detailed assessments and may end up judging research on easily identifiable aspects such as peer citation papers and the ‘impact factor’ of the journal in which they were published, rather than actually reading the work and forming a judgement. Therefore, it is likely that the RQF assessment process will see judgements based on a much smaller set of criteria than is intended or desirable.

It is also possible that the focus on research outcomes measured in terms of impact and quality may discourage innovative new projects aimed at achieving new knowledge. Instead, researchers and funding providers will prefer more conservative, outcome-assured proposals. It is interesting to note that Britain’s Research Assessment Exercise is very similar to the proposed RQF and is currently under review due to the complexity of that system. This is a sobering evaluation of the likely success of the government’s RQF model.

Other criticisms of the proposed RQF have focused on the rushed nature of the implementation process, which has occurred prior to the adequate testing and finetuning of the assessment methodology. As stated by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Glyn Davis:

... with the proposed implementation timed for 2008, it will not be simple to guarantee that any new research assessment model is robust and tested in order to ensure its accuracy and cost-effectiveness.

This sentiment was echoed in the Productivity Commission’s review of the public support for science and innovation. The report recommended that the RQF’s implementation be placed on hold until there was substantial testing of the coalition’s preferred model.

Others have questioned the need for change and whether the RQF will deliver on its claims. The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee noted that there is no significant evidence of poor quality research under the present funding system and any changes need to carefully consider the incentive structure. But, of course, as we have seen many times before, under this government recommendations of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee have frequently been ignored in other policy areas—and, in this case, it seems the Productivity Commission’s warnings have also been disregarded.

The National Tertiary Education Union has voiced its concern over the potential for universities to manoeuvre in attempts to maximise their institutional funding outcomes from the new system. There are legitimate fears that the RQF model could encourage poaching of researchers from one university to another without any net benefits to Australian research overall. In fact, poaching of researchers is one of the reasons that the British are abandoning their research framework, which the government has relied on to argue the case for its RQF.

The University of Adelaide’s submission in response to the 2005 issues paper summarises the concerns of many when it points out:

In order for the RQF to be worthwhile, it needs to ‘add value’ or significantly improve on the present metric based processes for allocating research block grants—particularly if the intention is to allocate all, or part, of the research block grant funding on the basis of RQF outcomes. As part of this process, it will be important to be clear what ‘research’ is taken to mean in this context, ie what is the scope of the RQF and what activity is, or is not, to be included for review and funding as ‘research’ activity.

The RQF should seek to better inform Commonwealth Government decisions on the overall level and strategic allocation of research, research training and research infrastructure funding. In particular, the RQF must enable the institutions and the Commonwealth Government to benchmark Australian research against the very best in the world. It will be important to develop a funding model that will both maintain the diversity of the sector to meet a wide range of competing needs and reward research excellence that meets, or exceeds, agreed national and international benchmarks. It is not clear how these important objectives are to be achieved, or how closely the RQF might be linked to national strategic research needs (eg national research priorities, national research infrastructure framework).

Further, where the criteria of quality and impact have clearly been met, it is not clear how the critical underlying issue of the full funding of research is to be addressed. If this latter issue is not addressed, it is difficult to understand how the long-term objective of the RQF to enhance the quality of the national research effort relative to our international peers can be achieved.

Those questions remain unanswered.

The key recommendation from many sources, which has been repeatedly ignored by the minister, is that the RQF’s implementation be delayed until such time as there has been sufficient testing and analysis of the impact of the new requirements. In fact, the minister’s own department reinforced that view in Senate estimates just a few weeks ago. I note a report in the Australian on 21 February 2007 on those Senate estimates proceedings. That report said:

In Senate Estimates last week DEST officers revealed there was still much preparation to be completed and a lot of decisions to be made before it began.

DEST’s Evan Arthur said the Government had not made a decision about the specifics of how the RQF will affect the funding of universities.

…            …            …

Dr Arthur said broad criteria had been developed to apply to rankings of quality and impact.

Dr Arthur went on to say:

However, there is a lot of detailed work to be done to make those appropriate for the various discipline clusters that the panel will address.

I move on now to another issue—that is, the issue of adequate funding for the desired research quality outcomes. That issue is not provided for in this legislation and continued funding shortfalls can only be expected to damage the ability of Australian higher education institutes to reach the forefront of international research. This has been pointed out to the minister by no less an authority than Australia’s Chief Scientist. Jim Peacock, who chaired the minister’s advisory working party, the development advisory group, warned the minister in his report that overall research funding needed to be increased. Specifically, Dr Peacock said:

The Advisory Group strongly recommends that ... the overall block grant envelope should be increased ... This would be an effective mechanism to encourage research of high quality and relevance ...

Dr Peacock goes on to say that if funding is to award impact as well as quality then more is needed. These are important questions for the minister and important issues for the government to satisfy both the Labor Party and the research sector about as it proceeds with this legislation and with the RQF.

The Labor Party shares the view that it is important to maintain the highest research quality, and as such supports a quality assurance scheme. However, I have doubts about the approach taken by the government to achieve this end and, indeed, whether or not this complex system will actually make a significant improvement to the quality of Australian research. Labor have signalled our plans to scrap the RQF if we win government and direct the $87 million earmarked for RQF implementation to create a new quality assurance system for universities that will encourage universities to concentrate on their research strengths. Our system will be rigorous, transparent, fair and efficient—something the government cannot guarantee for the RQF.

In the meantime, the Labor Party will not oppose the passage of this bill. It is, however, unfortunate that the Howard government continues to push through flawed legislation in an area of policy that is so vital to the future of Australia. Every time new and onerous administrative requirements are placed on the higher education sector, resources are diverted from the important role of universities in promoting research, development and teaching. The Howard government’s continued approach of underfunding while simultaneously overmanaging our university and research sectors is unsustainable and ultimately damaging for our nation’s future prospects.

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