Attachment: CAPA Paper
The higher education sector’s low expectations of the 2005 Federal Budget were fulfilled last night with the release of a budget that largely ignores universities. In anticipation of this, many key stakeholders such as the NTEU and AVCC did not bother to attend parliament for its release.
This budget contains no surprises, as the few higher education budget measures that were included had been announced previously, either as part of long-term commitments contained in budgets of previous years or as commitments arising out of the federal election of last year. In other words, there is little new money for the sector. A slight increase in ARC funding is all that has been provided for research. Universities will have to cover the shortfalls in the Budget themselves, which leads to concerns that unregulated fees (such as postgraduate coursework fees) could climb higher as a result.
