An injection of millions of dollars to overhaul outdated and inadequate university infrastructure has been announced in Australia. The one-off sum of A$ 500 million (Rs.2,050 crore) was awarded in the new Labour government’s first budget presented in May. It was billed as a fund to “rebuild campuses after 11 years of neglect”.
The funds are an unexpected windfall, and the move is seen as an early dividend of a much-expanded public endowment that has been set aside to support the sector. The government says it will add A$ 5 billion to the existing Higher Education Endowment Fund (HEEF) to create a new Education Investment Fund (EIF) worth A$ 11 billion (Rs.45,100 crore).
Meanwhile the A$ 500 million, which is to be made available immediately to improve student amenities, libraries, laboratories and lecture halls, has won enthusiastic response. Comments Margaret Gardner, vice-chancellor of RMIT University (formerly the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology): “We are unlikely to see vice-chancellors dancing in the streets — that would be too scary — but we’ll be dancing privately in our offices and lounge rooms.”
However, this delight is tempered by concern in some quarters that a disproportionate amount of the money will go to the country’s large, research-intensive institutions. Greg Hill, vice-chancellor of the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, says the $ 2.3 million his institution received compares unfavourably with $ 35.2 million (Rs.144 crore) given to the University of Sydney.
While the new fund is far larger, and the government has scrapped an annual cap that limited spending to the previous fund’s income from interest, the range of potential recipients has also expanded to include research organisations and vocational educational and training institutions. Says Ian Young, vice-chancellor of Swinburne University of Technology: “There’s a real risk that funds will be spread too thinly.”
A universities lobby group has called on the government to guarantee that higher education will end up with at least the A$ 6 billion originally promised in the HEEF. Whatever the outcome, they can bank on receiving the A$ 304 million allocated in the first round of grants next year, prior to the transition to the new EIF system.