Written by Andrew Norton for The Conversation
On the surface, Australia’s fourth and fifth ministers for higher education for 2013 – Labor’s Kim Carr and the Coalition’s Christopher Pyne – have political views that are many miles apart. Even by the partisan standards of Canberra, they are passionate supporters of their opposing political parties.
But curiously both have used the first days of their ministerial terms to raise doubts about the demand-driven system of university funding and link it to a perceived slip in university quality. Since caps on undergraduate student places at public universities were eased and then largely abolished, student numbers have increased rapidly, by as many as 190,000 extra students.
