University Of Western Sydney Funding

The Hon. JAN BURNSWOODS [5.06 p.m.]: Tonight I raise a subject that I have spoken about in this House before, the University of Western Sydney [UWS]. Unfortunately, rather than paying tribute to the various works of the university and in particular its commitment to the region, to equity and to disadvantaged students, I wish to place on record the threat posed by recent actions by the Federal Government to the work not only of the University of Western Sydney but also of other universities across New South Wales and Australia. I refer particularly to the Federal Government’s research green paper which was issued on 30 June 1999 and is currently being debated in universities. The Federal Government presumably is close to making a decision on the issues it contains.

On the face of it the document contains objectives and rhetoric that probably do not sound too bad, but the proposals are a great threat to many universities. They have the fundamental purpose of
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returning us essentially to a two-tier system of universities, the old days of universities and colleges of advanced education, which so much of the work in universities in the 1980s was designed to get over. The analysis that the University of Western Sydney has made of the green paper suggests that the impact of the proposed formula for distributing research dollars will be, in the immediate term, a reduction in funding for post-graduate research students at UWS and, in the long term, not only a smaller operating grant but a cumulative downward spiral which will mean fewer dollars for infrastructure, services and initiatives.

The University of Western Sydney is only 10 years old. It started out as two colleges of advanced education and an institute of higher education - with no formal research funds. In the past 10 years the university has done extremely well in obtaining research grants, getting employment for its graduates in the whole area of research management, and fostering post-graduate research. Of the post-1987 universities, UWS has done fairly well in attracting external research funds. But part of the problem is that the eight universities commonly known as the sandstone universities attract very much more in research funds and have investments and so on. It seems clear that the purpose of the green paper is to further institutionalise the division between those universities and the newer ones.

At the moment, the University of Western Sydney has some 700 research post-graduate students, an increase from fewer than 100 at its beginning. It seems that the impact of the Government’s proposals will be that block funding will probably stay roughly the same, at around $2.7 million, and that funding for individual projects may well stay the same, at about $8.2 million. The very serious projected decreases occur in research training, where the projection is an immediate drop from $7.5 million to $5.5 million, and in special post-graduate scholarships, where the projected immediate drop is from the current $1.3 million to $0.9 million. Of course, the outcome is fewer government-funded post-graduate students, fewer scholarships, and a consequential cut to the operating grant.

Not only is the projected $2.3 million loss in the year 2000 bad enough; the downward spiral starts immediately. That loss will compound as student numbers drop and the income from student fees decreases, with a consequential reduction in services. A threat of less growth, less region building and less diversification particularly applies to the University of Western Sydney, and other New South Wales universities will suffer similarly. But I believe that the threat to the University of Western Sydney - with the special mission it has had to bring higher education to people throughout that region - is much more serious. At present 54 per cent of western Sydney’s students reside in greater western Sydney, and it is on those students that the impact of these proposals will hit hardest. Indications for the future also suggest that the work on building up industry links will suffer. [Time expired.]