The Australian hybrid: public and private higher education funding

This chapter examines Australian higher education funding policy since World War II. It shows how longstanding policy institutions and political views shape current arrangements, and limit the likely range of future changes. The political conditions do not exist for a fundamental transformation in either direction of Australia's mixed public-private higher education funding model. For most of Australia's higher education history governments did not directly regulate public university fees. But before free higher education began in 1974 fees were low by current standards, kept down by state and Commonwealth grants. The largest group of higher education students in Australia remains domestic undergraduates in government-supported places. The government pays a tuition subsidy on their behalf to their higher education provider, while students pay a student contribution up to a legislated maximum. Deregulated fees differ from student contribution increases that compensate for reduced public funding, because they allow overall funding levels to be set by universities in the market.