Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition (Social and Community Affairs)) Share this | Hansard source

I too wish to contribute to the debate on the Higher Education Legislation Amendment (2007 Measures No. 1) Bill 2007 and to support the concerns that have been articulated by Senator Carr, Senator Stott Despoja and Senator Hurley about just what this bill will achieve. While we on this side of the chamber are not opposing the bill, I want to focus on what are probably the most contentious parts of the bill, which are those relating to the research quality framework and its implementation. I do so from two points of view: firstly, from the point of view of the impact of the RQF on the regional universities and their future and, secondly, from the point of view of not thinking about the RQF in isolation but considering the impacts of the RQF together with the learning and teaching performance framework that is also being put in place and how that can create a teaching-research nexus in many universities as they try to struggle with the implementation of the RQF.

I want to make some broad comments about the bill, which clarify the requirements of the Higher Education Loan Program. Senator Stott Despoja, who passionately understands all of those issues, reflected on those very carefully this morning and highlighted just what those impacts are going to be for Commonwealth supported students. The bill also amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to implement the revised National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes, and it amends the Higher Education Support Act, the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Higher Education Support (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2003 to limit the time when students will be able to claim entitlement to Commonwealth support. So there are important amendments to higher education legislation that need to be recorded.

I want to move to the research quality framework issues and the concerns that have been raised today. I agree with the previous speakers who have said that the insistence on the research quality framework proposal and model is fundamentally flawed. This has been reflected in submissions to the inquiry into this bill. There are major concerns about transparency, about broader impacts on publicly funded research and about the onerous provisions that will be placed on universities in the reporting framework that is being developed. The message has been very clear and consistent from the Group of Eight universities, which includes the Canberra based ANU. The Group of Eight, who are responsible for 60 per cent of Australia’s university research and manage more than 70 per cent of the national competitive grants that are provided in higher education, have outlined very clearly in their submissions to the working party of the department on the research quality framework implementation group and to the committee investigating this bill that it is hugely problematic for them. Last year, Professor Glyn Davis, Chair of the Group of Eight, said:

... it is very important that any new research assessment model is robust and tested to ensure it is accurate and cost-effective before implementation. It will be difficult to achieve this in the proposed 2008 implementation time-frame.

There are some lessons to be learned from overseas experiences. This RQF framework model moves to implement something that has been dumped in the UK. That in itself seems to be a fundamental reason for not proceeding and for learning from the experiences of overseas countries and for moving on from what is a flawed model.

There are clear messages from other overseas countries too. In New Zealand, the lesson is very clear: the universities there found it very difficult to plan for the RQF. At the time that they were considering it, they did not have the funding algorithm. Universities in New Zealand found it impossible to work out what the impact would be and how they would be able to report on it. They needed to see how it operated in the first round before they could understand how their universities were going to be affected financially. In this legislation, a very minimal amount of money has been provided for the implementation process—far, far less than the universities indicated that they were going to need to implement the RQF as it is proposed. While the Group of Eight have consistently supported an efficient cost-effective research quality assessment mechanism, they are advocating for something totally different. The universities have a preference for a validated metrics based approach to quality and impact assessment, and that is the model that the UK have implemented since they dumped their similar RQF assessment exercise. We are going back to the future here with the frustrating, devilishly complex and quite divisive model that the Minister for Education, Science and Training is trying to implement.

I mentioned the issue of the learning and teacher performance framework which the government is implementing as part of the process and parallel to the RQF. That is a fairly inexpensive exercise and is built around performance measures that largely existed prior to its introduction. But the RQF is going to be far more expensive for the sector and it is going to be very difficult for universities as a whole to do a cost-benefit analysis of going down this path. Whether or not the inclusion of quantitative metrics could enhance the RQF by reducing the amount of qualitative assessment required is difficult to determine, especially where the impact is concerned. Those people who have been talking to me about the RQF are concerned that the impact essays and statements that will be required for significant work will be both difficult and onerous to produce and then to assess. From the universities’ point of view, the system is fundamentally flawed and is not going to deliver the outcomes that the government wants. The irony of it all is that if the government had taken the advice of its experts—the universities who are trying to advance research and higher education in Australia and to contribute to the productivity gains of the 21st century—then they would know that this will be very difficult.

With the trial of this and then with its implementation in 2008, we could see a very serious nexus emerge between the teaching and research functions of universities. We will have two streams of universities, some that are researching and garnering the research dollars and others that are trying to teach skills and that will be very disadvantaged. Labor has a very different approach to higher education. Its strong messages, which have been gathered and promoted through Kevin Rudd’s education revolution, are really about valuing lifelong learning and building our international competitiveness based on a massive investment in education from cradle to grave. That is not what we are going to see in this RQF.

Coming back to the bill before us: Senator Stott-Despoja made comments in the debate this morning about the debts that students are now going to be carrying for higher education and the fact that we are going to see, as a matter of course, $200,000 university degrees. These are the things that are going to come into effect through this legislation in front of us, and last night’s announcements confirmed that that is the case. We are going to see an accumulation of higher education contribution debts. We are going to see massive burdening of young people as they start out in life in their professions. We had the minister saying that we should increase HECS for those courses from which there is going to be greater reward in a person’s professional life. What we are going to see from that is a much greater Americanisation of higher education. People will start their working lives saddled with a debt that will take them decades, perhaps, to deal with. It is a disappointing piece of legislation for Labor. We believe that there were much better ways to deal with higher education. But we are supporting the amendment bill simply because getting some funding into higher education is better than the government’s record. I will leave my remarks there.