Title: The Australian Federal Government's education policy changes: some implications for Australian universities

Authors: Shamsul Arifeen Khan Mamun; Mohammad Mafizur Rahman

Addresses: School of Commerce and ADFI, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia ' School of Commerce, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia

Abstract: In 2013, the Australian Government declared its education policy, cutting federal government grants for public universities with a view to generating funds for the Gonski reform: a funding plan for primary and secondary schools. In 2014, the new government has declared university funding policy giving an indication about further funding cut from 2016. In the context of diminishing government grants, universities started to think strategically and act accordingly to cope with their budgetary challenges. In this paper we have explored the rational strategy the public universities might take based on the efficiency concept in production economics. We have used cross-section data collected from the Australian Department of Education website. Descriptive and empirical analyses have been used as research methodologies to analyse the data and to interpret the upcoming challenges for the universities.

Keywords: Australia; Gonski reform; cost of higher education; federal government grants; education policy; ordinary least squares; OLS; elasticity; public universities; primary schools; secondary schools; school funding; efficiency concept; production economics; education funding.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEED.2015.070619

International Journal of Education Economics and Development, 2015 Vol.6 No.2, pp.97 - 110

Received: 07 Oct 2014
Accepted: 20 Nov 2014
Published online: 14 Jul 2015 *

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