Finding a voice for higher education

In Australia, university study is more popular than ever before.  More than 700,000 Australians are enrolled in higher education courses, and 2011 applications suggest numbers will continue to grow.  If a test of esteem is the desire to join, universities have never been held in greater standing.Yet this personal enthusiasm for further education rarely translates into political enthusiasm.Though many Australians have direct personal connections to universities - as students, graduates and employees - they do not see universities as a political issue.So when governments save money, by cutting support for higher education, there is little public response. Real cuts to per-student funding began under the Keating government in 1995, persisted through most of the Howard years, and marked the first years of the Rudd government, until the GFC stimulus response saw a welcome increase in support for new research buildings and teaching facilities.Years of funding decline have seen universities do more with less. Across Australia, staff-student ratios have moved from 15 students to one academic to over 20 to one.This experience contrasts with the fate of our schools, so often at the centre of public debate. In the same period schools have seen their funding increase more than inflation, and staff-student ratios have fallen.Attempts by universities and their supporters to improve higher education funding by similar amounts usually fall flat.When in 2004 the National Tertiary Education Union ran a campaign against some members of parliament in protest against declining university funding, it was met with a swing to the government in those electorates.In the recent 2010 federal election, higher education proved again not a major issue. Neither major political party released a policy until the last few days of the campaign, and those documents contained little new. There is still no higher education policy on the Australian Greens web site, despite their new role in the Federal Parliament.Yet outside the specialised higher education media, this neglect of higher education amid an election campaign attracted little comment.This raises an intriguing question: is the sector’s frequent inability to attract political attention a sign of weakness - or an unwelcome effect of success? Read the full article > Image: Bond University, Bond Sarah / flickr &nbsp