Uncapped funding for higher education fairer and more efficient

There is a degree of resignation in higher education circles that the system of funding undergraduate university places according to student demand may be on its last legs. This is not new. Hand-wringing about the sustainability of the so-called demand-driven system has been fashionable for some time. There is heightened scepticism of the demand-driven system among Australia's sandstone universities, which have an unfortunate tendency to look down their nose at those institutions that take students with ATAR [Australian Tertiary Admission Rank] scores of 70 and below, as if those that do are 'lowering the standards' for everyone else. This is despite the fact that many establishment universities would not know what a student with an ATAR of 70 looks like, let alone how university teaching might be configured to assist these students to succeed. It is also conventional wisdom that, because the demand-driven system is a Labor creation, it will inevitably be for the chop under any Coalition government that follows. While budget pressures are real, it does the Coalition no credit to assume the demand-driven system will be dispatched to history if it forms government this year. Indeed, there are many reasons why it may survive and even prosper