One of the more curious claims made in submissions to the higher education review is that markets will drive homogenisation rather than diversity. In my submission (pdf), I identify four market design problems that I believe limit diversity:

* access of foreign-owned providers to the FEE-HELP loan scheme is made very difficult (I expand on this here)

* Commonwealth-supported places are not available to most private providers of higher education

* student contribution amount regulations means that all public universities have to operate at the bargain-basement end of the market (though the effect of this has been alleviated somewhat by international student fees)

* a rigid quota system of allocating student places limits the scope for disciplinary specialisation
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