Month: July 2007

Could improved Youth Allowance undermine rural campuses?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 41 Comments

An editorial in today’s Age follows on from yesterday’s story about would-be students from regional areas being more likely to defer their university studies to improve their Youth Allowance eligibility.

The editorial draws attention to both the claimed under-funding of regional campuses and the added costs faced by regional students when they have to move to study, calling for an inquiry but effectively suggesting both receive additional Commonwealth resources. Yet there are tensions between improving income support for rural students and helping rural campuses.

I don’t believe that there is any inherent reason why educational delivery costs should be higher in regional areas. The problem seems to be achieving economies of scale by spreading fixed costs over a large number of students. That’s been hard to do for several reasons: low initial population density in regional areas, weak school results limiting the pool of potential applicants, and the preference of many students for study in capital cities.

In Victoria, there is only one truly regional university, the University of Ballarat (though Deakin University has a substantial regional presence, and other universities have rural campuses). The Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre provides statistics for each university by the home region of applicants. 35% of applicants to Victorian universities from the Central Highland region where the University of Ballarat is located gave it as their first preference in 2005 for academic year 2006. So about two-thirds of potential local students actually want to go somewhere else – except for Swinburne, applications are spread fairly evenly across the other Victorian universities.
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Are fewer uni students getting Youth Allowance?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 16 Comments

An article in this morning’s Age reports on research from the On Track survey of recent Victorian school leavers finding that:

Thirty-seven per cent of regional students told the survey for State Government initiative On Track they were waiting to qualify for an independent Youth Allowance before studying, compared with 15 per cent of city students. The easiest way to qualify is by earning about $18,000 over 18 months before starting.

For eighteen months now I have been curious about why university students seem to be starting at a later age, with this kind of playing the Youth Allowance system being high on the list of theories.

Unfortunately, there was no data released for 2005 on the ages of students ‘new to higher education’, so I had to use the commencing student data (which isn’t as good, because it includes people transferring from other courses). While the trend of an absolute enrolment decline in ‘young’ commencing students, which I define as those aged 16 to 18, stopped and their numbers started to climb again, they continued to decline as a proportion of all commencing students aged 16 to 21. If the 16 to 18 year olds had maintained their year 2000 market share of all commencing students 21 and under in 2005, there would have been about 6,600 more of them at university than in fact was the case. Continue reading “Are fewer uni students getting Youth Allowance?” →

University and Beyond survey

~ Andrew Norton ~ Leave a comment

I don’t normally do announcement posts, but as someone who relies heavily on the survey research of others I thought I would give a plug to the University and Beyond survey. Open to all currently enrolled students, this is a description:

This survey will develop a greater understanding of students’ plans for “life after university”, of their perceptions about various aspects of university life, and of their expectations if they plan to enter the workforce. The results will provide valuable information to businesses and universities and will assist students to develop a realistic understanding of their post–university options and prospects.

It finishes on Friday 6 July.

Will the public support conditional welfare?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 30 Comments

Today in The Australian my CIS colleague Peter Saunders comes out in favour of ‘conditional welfare’, in which some welfare payments for parents deemed irresponsible or incompetent are restricted, so that they can only be spent on items the government deems appropriate.

So far as I am aware, this is not an idea that has been directly tested in an opinion poll. But based on answers to other questions we can take an educated guess as to what the public might say if asked.

Most of the people to whom conditional welfare would apply would presumably be on unemployment or single parent benefits, two groups which have not inspired enthusiasm among Australian voters. For example, a 2001 Saulwick poll asked about benefit levels for various beneficiary groups. Majorities supported higher payments for those who could not reasonably expected to work, the aged and disabled. But only 22% wanted more for single parents, and only 17% for the unemployed.

Both groups, perhaps, are seen as vulnerable to the moral hazards of welfare. Continue reading “Will the public support conditional welfare?” →

Is the CIS to blame for Australian greenhouse policy?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 26 Comments

I was rather surprised to find myself mentioned in the latest greenhouse book, Guy Pearse’s High and Dry. But there I am, on page 244. How I managed to make any appearance in a book on an issue that is a very long way down my list of interests requires some explanation.

High and Dry analyses why (at least until recently) the PM was a climate change sceptic. From what I have read, it is a more detailed version of Clive Hamilton’s book Scorcher, arguing that the influence of the fossil-fuel industry and ‘neo-liberal’ think-tanks explains the PM’s stance (Hamilton, one of Pearse’s PhD supervisors, draws on Pearse’s research).

To argue that ‘neo-liberal’ think-tanks influence Howard, Pearse has to show their connections to the government. And this is where I come in:

Andrew Norton, while not so vocal on greenhouse policy, is another at CIS with close links to the Howard government. He was once an adviser to former environment minister David Kemp.

‘Not so vocal’? ‘Not vocal at all’ would be closer to it. So far as I can find, my only expressed opinion on greenhouse policy was this passing reference in a blog post this February that does not support Pearse’s case:
Continue reading “Is the CIS to blame for Australian greenhouse policy?” →

Does union power still frighten voters #2?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 14 Comments

According to The Australian‘s take on a Newspoll on unions and political parties on Friday:

…the Coalition’s campaign [on union power] is not resonating with middle Australia as 55 per cent of voters rate Mr Rudd’s handling of unions as good and only 27 per cent rate his performance poorly – including 10 per cent of Labor supporters – while 50 per cent say Mr Howard is not doing a good job. …. while the Coalition claims it is on an election winner with its plans to demonise the unions, the Newspoll suggests voters will be more discerning.

This is a different conclusion to the one I came to a couple of weeks ago, when I argued that though improved union behaviour has been rewarded with significantly fewer people thinking that they have too much power, there was life yet in this issue for the Coalition.

I see two problems with the Newspoll. The first, as I noted in several posts about issue polling, stances on issues and party preferences are often closely tied together, so it is hard to know whether a person supports party X because of their stance on issue Y, or holds their opinion on issue Y because of their support for party X. Mentioning the party in the same question as the issue, as Newspoll does in this case, increases the chance that underlying party preference will drive opinions on issues.
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