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Distributing Student Places in Australian Higher Education
Author(s) -
Norton Andrew
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
australian economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8462
pISSN - 0004-9018
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8462.12329
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , supply and demand , higher education , distribution (mathematics) , politics , public policy , public university , business , economics , public economics , public relations , marketing , labour economics , economic growth , political science , public administration , microeconomics , mathematical analysis , philosophy , linguistics , mathematics , law
Higher education systems need policies for distributing student places between higher education providers, courses and students. In supply‐driven systems, government and university decisions dominate. In demand‐driven systems, student choices play a larger role. Over the last 35 years Australia has moved from a supply‐driven to a largely demand‐driven university system and then partly back again. When students pay their own costs, both major political parties have supported market distribution of student places for decades. But for subsidised student places there is policy instability, due to fluctuating priorities for containing public expenditure and responding to demographic and labour market changes.