Category Archives: Higher Education Financing

15% universal loan fee for HECS/HELP

December 30, 2016 By in Education Policy, Higher Education Financing Tags: , , , ,

The Grattan Institute released a report calling for a universal 15% loan fee to be added when student incur a higher education HECS/HELP liability.  Reasoning behind a 15% loan fee is that it would go towards offsetting the interest-rate subsidy students receive as a result of their HECS/HELP liability being indexed at the rate of CPI (currently 1.3%).  That is, a real rate of interest that is zero. As opposed to the Commonwealth Government actual cost of funding which is closer to 2.75% (current 10 year bond yield).  In 2015/2016 this interest rate subsidy was around $550million for the year on total outstanding HECS/HELP liabilities of around $40billion. Bruce Chapman also wrote an article for The Conversation supporting the idea of a 15% loan fee.

Below are my reasons why a 15% universal loan fee is a far better idea than alternative proposals for reducing the funding burden of HECS/HELP. Not just the interest-rate subsidy that makes HECS fair for all types of students with many different backgrounds but also the implicit understanding that some students will fail to repay their HECS liability due to simple bad luck and the uncertainty of life. Continue reading →

An Incentive Compatible Model for Higher Education deregulation

January 12, 2016 By in Education Policy, Higher Education Financing Tags: , , , ,

Given the level of opportunism occurring in the Australian Vocational Education & Training higher education sector since deregulation (uncapping places & fees), recent articles:

I think it is worth reblogging my Senate submission (Feb 2015) suggesting a new incentive compatible model for a deregulated higher education market where education providers have ‘skin in the game’.  This Senate submission provided a solution to what I saw as a fundamental misunderstanding of the risks associated with deregulating higher education within the current policy framework, published as an opinion piece in The Australian (Oct 2014):

This was followed up by an article calling for universities to have more ‘skin in the game’ (Mar 2015):

I presented this model at the ANU Forum on Higher Education Financing, Friday 13th August 2015, on the topic ‘Should universities have skin in the game?’.

This model can be applied to any type of higher education provider where students have access to government administered income-contingent loans. Whether providers be universities, vocational, professional bodies or dedicated postgraduate institutions.  This model can even be applied to specific types of courses which are regulated separately, such as proposed Australian university flagship courses.

Continue reading →

What drives increases in University fees? Bennett hypothesis vs Baumol’s cost disease

December 27, 2015 By in Education Policy, Higher Education Financing Tags: ,

Over the last 15 years, increases in higher education fees have accelerated and are now rising faster than any other part of the economy.  Outstripping even the rising cost of medicine and health care.  And yet we see no meaningful improvements in productivity or GDP growth over the same time period.  Since 1978, the cost of higher education has increased in the US by 1,120% – more than 11 times.  This graph from Bloomberg clearly illustrates the anomaly of higher education fee inflation.

 Bloomberg tuition (s)Source: Bloomberg, Data: Bloomberg Labor Department

 What’s driving higher education fees higher? 

What we see in the wider economy does not justify an explanation that fees are increasing in line with improved earnings expectations.  There is some improvement in earnings overall but productivity and GDP are not rising anywhere near as fast to justify this optimism.  If we had a matching 1,120% increase in productivity or GDP over the last 30 years the world economy would be a lot more rosier place than it is at the Continue reading →

ANU Forum on Higher Education Financing

July 29, 2015 By in Economics of Education, Higher Education Financing Tags: , , ,

I will be presenting at the ANU Forum on Higher Education Financing, Friday 13th August 2015, on the topic ‘Should universities have skin in the game?’ based on my Senate submission ‘An Incentive Compatible Model for Higher Education deregulation’

Details on the conference: Continue reading →

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