Sid Marris | April 03, 2008
THE bigger universities want some of the windfall from next month's federal budget to be put into the $6 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund as a downpayment on what they expect will be the Rudd Government's greater commitment to research.
However, the universities' task will become more complicated as general staff yesterday lodged a claim for a 9 per cent annual pay rise, saying they needed to make up for pay and conditions lost during the Howard government years.
Alan Robson, chairman of the Group of Eight, which represents the nation's oldest higher education institutions, said he did not expect any increase in funding when the budget was delivered on May 13. But he said there was scope for the existing HEEF to beexpanded.
Professor Robson is highly critical of the rundown of public funding under the Howard government and the dependency it created on income from foreign students. He said research funding had fallen and was rightly a focus for the Labor Government.
"The HEEF fund was an excellent initiative and I would be hoping that in the surplus to this budget that some of the surplus would be put into supplementing the Higher Education Endowment Fund so that that could grow into a larger amount," hesaid.
The emphasis on research would mean a greater focus on collaboration in order to compete with North America, Europe, China and Korea, said Professor Robson, the vice-chancellor of the University of Western Australia said.
"We are vulnerable to being bypassed, cut off and left behind in the advancement of knowledge. And if we allow that to happen, we can kiss goodbye to an innovative Australia.
"The way forward is to collaborate (with) rather than compete against our northern hemisphere counterparts."
The Rudd Government wants to post a big surplus in its budget for 2008-09, larger than 1.5 per cent of the economy, or $17billion, in a bid to take pressure off interest rates. That money can either be banked with the Reserve Bank or put into one of several investment funds established by the previous government designed to pay for public servants' and military superannuation, education or health and medical research.
In a speech to the National Press Club, Professor Robson urged a greater focus on research and a greater interaction between universities and small- and medium-sized firms.
The Go8 is the lobby group for the nation's eight oldest universities: Sydney, NSW, Melbourne, Monash, Queensland, Adelaide, Western Australia and the Australian National University.
Professor Robson said that if universities had been funded at the same rate of growth as inflation, their incomes would be $1 billion higher.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, public funding for higher education in Australia declined by 4 per cent between 1995 and 2004 compared with the OECD average of a 49 per cent increase.
Community and Public Sector Union's federal secretary David Carey said the wage claim was neither outrageous nor out of line with the sector.
The union also wanted some of the universities that offered only nine weeks' paid maternity leave to lift it to 12 to 14 weeks.
He stressed the claim would be tailored to meet the needs of the particular university and was not a sector-wide ambit.
Education Minister Julia Gillard's office said bargaining was a matter for the parties and would not comment further.