Universities have slammed a series of the Turnbull government's fee-deregulation proposals in submissions released by the Federal Department of Education on Thursday.
The submissions made in response to the government's policy options paper, released at May's federal budget, have criticised proposals to introduce higher fees for "flagship courses", collect student debt from the dead and expand funding to non-university higher education providers.
The blow to the federal government's fee-deregulation ambitions comes as it attempts to get meaningful changes to higher education funding through a contested Senate after former Education Minister Christopher Pyne's 2014 attempt failed under the weight of a public campaign against "$100,000 degrees".
The sector has been in policy limbo ever since, while outstanding student debt has grown to $42 billion, according to a submission by the Grattan Institute.
In his submission, the Grattan Institute's higher education program director Andrew Norton restated his support for reducing the initial loan repayment threshold to $42,000, changing the indexation of loan thresholds from average weekly earnings to inflation and recovering repayments from the deceased estates worth more than $100,000. Mr Norton was recently appointed to the Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham's expert advisory panel.
The University of Technology was one of a number of universities that did not rule out supporting reducing the repayment threshold, but refused to back any move to tie repayments to CPI or collect debts from the dead.
It reserved its strongest criticism for the government's proposed "flagship course" system where universities would be allowed to charge higher fees for certain courses such as law or medicine. It comes after widespread condemnation of the proposal by the Group of Eight, The Australian Technology Network of Universities and The Regional Universities Network in July.
"[This has] a high potential to create an elitist, two-tiered university system – disadvantaged groups will be adversely affected in terms of aspiration and capacity to access flagship courses due to the inevitably higher student contributions required," UTS said.
The University of Sydney was similarly scathing of the proposal.
"It [is] difficult to see how such a proposal would be supported by the new Senate, or survive a change of government if passed, when policy certainty will be vital to give providers the confidence to invest in such courses," it said.
Western Sydney University described the proposal as flawed.
"Coupling flagships with partial deregulation is a flawed proposal if the policy intent is at least in part to test the impact of opening the system to market forces," it said. It also criticised any move to recoup debts from the dead and a proposal to tie repayments to joint or family incomes.
"These options present complexities with Australian Tax Office administration and may have other detrimental impacts for particular equity groups," the university said.
In its submission, Melbourne University said the new model of "flagship courses" could serve as an "important mechanism to drive diversity and student choice in the sector".
However, the university warned that proposal was lacking in detail, and if rolled out poorly, could "further distort incentives for universities and not deliver the desired innovation in quality education".
Victoria University advised that lowering the threshold for repayments of HELP debts beyond the current minimum ($54,126) and tying loan repayments to family rather than individual income would disadvantage students from low-income families.
But the university did propose higher income earners potentially being charged at a higher rate for repayment.
In October, Mr Birmingham said the expert advisory panel would work "hand in glove" with the federal government to review more than 1000 submissions the government had received on its policy paper before it finalised its recommendations.
