Uni budget cuts an Asian Century 'joke'

·         BY:JULIE HARE 

·         From:The Australian 

·         May 28, 2013 12:00AM

THE heads of Australia's most elite research-intensive universities say their standing in international rankings is set to fall as budget cuts take their toll.

"We won't see a drop in rankings over the next couple of years, but we can expect to see our international standing compromised after that," said Peter Hoj, vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland, which has had $90 million cut from its budget over three years.

In the past seven months, Labor has taken $3.8 billion off the forward estimates for higher education and research. Yesterday, Australian National University vice-chancellor Ian Young asked staff and students to attend one of 17 forums over the next two weeks to "discuss the challenges we confront and to seek your ideas to help solve the issues".

The ANU says it will have $51m cut from its budget over the next two years.

"Any cuts of this magnitude have got to have an impact on the standing of Australian universities internationally," Professor Young said.

"It is an inconsistent set of policy initiatives when, at the same time, you want to raise the profile of Australian universities and move the country to more high-value-added export industries."

Julia Gillard has said that as an Asian Century priority she wants 10 universities in the world top 100 by 2025. At present there are between two and seven, depending on the league table.

University of Melbourne provost Margaret Sheil said cuts of $160m would have to be absorbed over the next four years. "The bigger and more research intensive the institution, the more the cuts hurt," Professor Sheil said.

She said there appeared to be a prevailing view that universities simply needed to be more efficient to absorb the costs.

But in its 2012 annual report, Melbourne's underlying surplus, when capital grants are discounted, was just $7m on revenues of nearly $2bn. UQ was $42m in the red with revenues of $1.8bn. ANU's estimated underlying surplus was $15m while the figure at the University of NSW is about $14m.

"We are working on a razor-thin margin," said Fred Hilmer, vice-chancellor of UNSW.

"With these cuts coming we will have to slow down hiring and slow down our investment in technology. How you reconcile that with the Asian Century ambition is just a joke."

Of potentially even greater concern was the imposition of a $2000 cap on tax-deductible expenses for self-education, Professor Hilmer said. "The real injustice is that it will hit the people who pay for their ongoing education themselves," he added.