Australian Experience with Private Higher Education

Abstract

This paper describes recent major expansion in private higher education in Australia. It concentrates particularly on higher education institutions as defined today in Australia as institutions offering recognised university-style degrees and diplomas, excluding vocational education and training that in other countries might be found in community colleges. It also concentrates on private higher education institutions and students, and not on other forms of privatisation that include strategies to attract private resources to support higher education institutions and students. However, reference will be made to the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) that has operated in Australia since 1990 and to its extension through FEE-HELP to tuition fee-paying domestic students in public and private institutions. Reference will also be made to entrepreneurial activities of public universities in raising substantially increased revenue, especially by charging full-cost fees from both domestic and international students, and by means of commercial activity. What is probably of most interest to an international audience are details about the recent expansion of private higher education enrolments and institutions and why this expansion has taken place; problems in defining private higher education and the lack of a robust data base; and the important role played by governments in providing a legislative base for private universities, an appropriate regulatory and quality assurance framework, including restrictions on use of the name "university" in institutional titles; and, more recently, government financial support to selective private providers for particular national priority courses and, more generally, to students in private institutions.