Australian government clarifies student support rules

Australia’s government has reduced the administrative burden for universities in meeting new student support obligations.

According to guidelines released by education minister Jason Clare, the new rules will take effect in April rather than January as originally planned. And universities that already provide the required types of support will not be forced to duplicate it. Rather, they can create an “overarching policy” that refers to their existing arrangements.

An explanatory statement accompanying the guidelines stresses that universities will not necessarily be held to account whenever students fail. It says that while institutions must have “supports in place to assist their students to succeed…ultimately students have the primary responsibility for accepting support and for their own success”.

The government has also deleted clauses that could have interfered in academic judgements and forced universities to repackage data they had already reported to the government, Australian National University policy expert Andrew Norton observed.

But he said the amended guidelines gave the Department of Education powers overlapping with those of the higher education regulator. While the revised student support guidelines were an improvement on the draft version, “this area of policy remains untidy”, Professor Norton blogged. “It will cause more confusion and incur more compliance costs than needed to protect the interests of students and taxpayers.”

The new rules were introduced as the opposition pressured the government to hold institutions more accountable and harangued universities for profiteering at students’ expense.

Such perceptions might be amplified as universities reportedly relax their admission requirements amid declining applications from school leavers. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that institutions in New South Wales had this year dropped entry scores for some engineering, health and education degrees by more than 10 points in a 100-point scale.

Meanwhile, as 2024 beckons, the education department has published 2022 enrolment statistics showing that domestic student numbers fell by more than 5 per cent that year.

Professor Norton said new domestic bachelor’s enrolments had fallen by almost 9 per cent in 2022, “ensuring years of revenue pain” for universities.

But he said the decline among school leavers was “more like a correction back to pre-Covid levels than a major disruption”. Teenage university admissions had grown strongly in the pandemic’s early years, when jobs were harder to find and gap years were not an option.

“The decline is largely in older age groups,” he tweeted.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com