On-line off-target: the unexpected consequences of Labor's e-university

The UAO’s danger is that it will disproportionately enroll students from low-and-middle-income families. The dynamics of the current system lead almost inevitably to this result. Setting a quota for campus universities below demand forces up the Year 12 scores required for entry, disadvantaging those without the home and school background conducive to high marks, principally lower-income people. The UAO will take the overflow.

The ALP’s decision to price the UAO at half the normal HECS charge will make it attractive even to those with other options. If students believe a degree is a degree wherever it comes from (something we’ve been encouraged to think), or that the universities they might otherwise attend are not high prestige anyway, why pay extra? To save a few thousand dollars they might make decisions that are not, in fact, in their own long-term interest.

While these students are disadvantaged, those remaining in the campus-based universities may benefit. Completely by accident, the ALP may increase the role of markets in higher education, and help trigger quality improvements in the campus experience.

As I suggested earlier, one reason universities can get away with unsatisfactory teaching is that setting the total number of places below actual demand almost guarantees universities of enough students. It is like a giant game of musical chairs. When the music stops hopeful students must grab a chair, any chair, to ensure that they do not miss out.

If, however, the government significantly increases the number of student places, through the 100,000 UAO places plus extras for other universities, supply and demand will be more evenly matched. The universities will not so easily be able to fill all their places.

How realistic is this hope? Predicting total demand is difficult, as it is driven by a mix of demographic, social and economic trends. The number of enrolments did go up by more than 100,000 over the last decade. However the enrolment boom in the late 1980s and early 1990s was partly driven by the early 1970s mini-baby boom. Indeed, more babies were born in 1971 than in any year before or since. The births of the early to mid-1980s that will be the main demographic influence on university demand over the coming years are lower in number – generally 30,000-40,000 a year below their early 1970s peak.

Nor is it likely that mature-age students will fill the demographic gap. Their numbers are down on the past, perhaps reflecting the higher up-front costs of education, but also the fact that earlier booms in student numbers reduced the pool of people without university qualifications. Despite hype about ‘lifelong learning’ this is unlikely to translate into great increases in mature-age people doing undergraduate degree courses. Updating of skills currently and for the foreseeable future will overwhelmingly consist of on-the-job training and short courses.

This leaves only many more young people completing Year 12 and wanting to go to university as the force creating significant unmet demand. This is certainly possible, but universities would be unwise to assume it is probable.

To preserve their student numbers in an expanded market universities will have to work harder than in the past to preserve their student numbers. The ALP’s information sheet on the UAO reports that on-campus students of the University of Southern Queensland, a leader in on-line education, are demanding equal access to the privileges of on-line students. I doubt USQ’s on-campus students will be the only such people realising their campus experience is not good enough.

One way for universities to maintain numbers is not necessarily to attract new students but to keep the students they have already. At many universities 20% or more of students leave without completing their courses.

Some students will always, for various reasons, drop out. However there are things universities could do to make staying more attractive. Intensifying the modest trend toward improving teaching quality is one possibility. Another is finding ways to make the campus experience more sociable. A quarter of first-years tell researchers they are only loosely connected to campus life. This group should particularly concern the campus universities. If students are getting little from the campus experience, why should they pay twice as much for it?

That the UAO might eventually have some good, if indirect, consequences does not take away from the fact that it is a bad idea, or rather it is an instance of a bigger bad idea: centralised control of higher education.

By all means establish the UAO for those people who can’t make it to campus. On-line education is better than no education. But there is not a shred of evidence that seemingly taken-out-of-the-air numbers like 100,000 places over ten years for the UAO represent a better assessment of students’ educational needs than students’ own choices in light of their circumstances as they evolve over the decade. All it is likely to do is push students into their second, third or lower course preference, just like the current system, with all the predictable effects on motivation and satisfaction.