Of all the dubious ideas likely to be submitted to the higher education funding review, the most dangerous because most likely to be accepted is that deregulated supply – from next year, the Commonwealth is scheduled to abolish the controls that currently tell unis how many students to take and broadly what disciplines they will be in – should be combined with capped prices.

That however is the message of the higher funding review submission of the Innovative Research Universities lobby group.

For them the price per discpline would be simplified version of the current ‘cluster’ funding model, with many disciplines given the same funding rate, and a flat maximum student price.

It would be a blunter price mechanism than now when we need a sharper one. Continue reading “Dubious ideas submitted to the higher education funding review, part 3” →