The outgoing chair of Universities Australia Glenn Withers will launch back into an academic career next year, beginning a groundbreaking trial to extend the HECS scheme to student living costs and overseas students.
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Dr Withers, who finishes a four-year term at the helm of the peak university group in January, will return to the ANU's Crawford School of Economics and Government to work in a partnership with the architect of HECS, Professor Bruce Chapman. They have secured funding to examine extending HECS to overseas students through international tax agreements and will trial the move in partnership with a Thai university.
Professor Withers said extending HECS to student living costs had the potential to improve academic outcomes, reduce drop-out rates and improve the uptake of uni study among rural, regional and disadvantaged students. A modest HECS loan of around $5000 a year would allow students to reduce their work hours and concentrate on their studies.
''Reducing the market work students have to complete allows them to attend classes and improve their performance. A good student just getting by can be a great student, and a student on the brink of dropping out altogether can complete their degree,'' he said.
Universities are under pressure to improve their uptake of disadvantaged students in line with a recommendation from the 2008 Bradley review that 20 per cent of undergraduates need to come from low socio-economic backgrounds by 2020.
Extending HECS to international students would also improve equity as well as bolstering the valuable international student market.
Dr Withers said international tax agreements could also see more Australian students study overseas with the aid of HECS loans once international agreements were in place to ensure debts incurred here and overseas were paid.
Along with the trial, Dr Withers will also be editing the first Cambridge Economic History of Australia.
He was leaving Universities Australia - the peak body which represents the interests of Australia's 39 universities - at a time when the major policy reforms affecting the sector had been put in place through the Bradley, Knight and Lomax-Smith reviews looking at better regulation, less onerous international student visas and improved base funding.
Dr Withers said the task for his replacement, Belinda Robinson, was to ensure the Gillard Government saw tertiary education as an economic driver and cultural asset worthy of investment, not a funding pool from which to plug the budget deficit.
