Education is not as expensive as ignorance ...

The current review of Australia’s higher education sector, initiated by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, has provided a timely opportunity to reflect on the present state of our universities. As a nation, it is now critically important to consider how best our universities should develop to meet the demands and expectations of our students, business, industry, government, and the community at large.

The AVCC strongly advances the need for a flexible "Framework of Choice" that will support each university to excel in those areas of teaching, learning and research that it does best – and not encourage universities to be all things to all people. In short, we must maintain and grow a diverse sector of high quality.

The outcome of the review process should be to devise the structural base to underpin substantial re-investment in our universities from both public and private sources. We must reverse the current trend of inadequate public investment in universities. Investing in universities is as much a defence of the nation as defence expenditure itself.

Looking to the future, we have set down four symbols for the future that must be embraced as the core part of the reform process. By 2020:

• Australia should be ranked in the top five nations for higher education excellence, investing at least two percent of GDP in its university sector;
• we should have at least one, recognised, world-class research centre in each significant academic field;
• higher education services should be one of the top three value-adding Australian exports; and
• over 60 percent of Australians should be completing higher education over their lifetime from a wide choice of quality universities.

Each of these is achievable if the reform process we embrace today is underpinned by investment for the future.

The higher education review presents the nation with the opportunity to reshape Australia’s university sector; to have diverse universities which are truly comparable to those around the world, open to all, relevant to student and national needs, and fully engaged with the wider community.

The AVCC also recognises that the universities themselves must continue to embrace change over the decade ahead. Forward from the Crossroads outlines the AVCC’s responses to the seven issues papers released by the Minister for Education, Science and Training as part of the review process. It canvasses some issues not well addressed by the review, and concludes by setting out the AVCC financing model and the issues that have shaped it.

The AVCC financing model provides the financing structure to achieve the AVCC vision for 2020 and, in doing so, addresses the issues raised by the review. It is the AVCC’s position that our financing model should make up the essence of a future financing system.

The cost of inaction is high. As nations become more reliant on knowledge, skills, research and development for their social and economic development and sustainability, reform of and investment in Australia’s higher education system is vital for our success as a society in the years ahead.

As Derek Bok – famous Harvard President and now University Professor at the John F Kennedy School of Government once said, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance".