Prices: Why vouchers won’t work while governments set fees

BRADLEY REPORT FAILS TO FIX UNI FEES MESS

The Bradley report is another chapter in the long story of pricing neglect in higher education, says a report being released today.

In a new report, Fixing Prices: Why vouchers won’t work while governments set fees, researcher Andrew Norton from the Centre for Independent Studies says that the Bradley report should have gone further to solve the financial problems of underfunded universities by deregulating student contribution amounts for higher education courses..

‘The federal government has a history of under-funding higher education, and the Bradley report gives us no reason to believe that this will change in the future,’ says Norton.

Under the current funding rates universities lose money on government-subsidised students. This has forced universities to cut costs and cram more students into courses.

The Bradley report recommends a voucher system for funding courses, but fails to set out a price-setting mechanism that would ensure universities have a financial incentive to take additional students in high-demand courses.  

‘The market for higher education should be deregulated so that higher education providers can set their own prices for courses, instead of bureaucrats in Canberra doing it for them. This would solve higher education course pricing issues and improve the range of choices available to students,’ says Norton.

A deregulated fee market has been a proven success for postgraduates and international students; it could work as well for undergraduate courses too.

The embargoed report is available at www.cis.org.au

Andrew Norton is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.

He is available for comment.

All media enquiries:
Leonie Phillips
Ph: 02 9438 4377
Mob: 0403 063 852
Email: