ATEC | Higer Education Sector Data and Analysis

Question

Senator FARUQI: I have a few questions about ATEC and to ATEC. I'll speak to the ATEC commissioners shortly, but I just have a couple of questions for the department. What data and analysis has the ATEC higher education costing and pricing working group requested from the department in its work so far? Ms Mohr: I'm going to get a colleague of mine to come up and talk to what the department- Mr Turvey: The work that the costing and pricing working group is doing is drawing on data from the sector rather than the department. We're working with the sector to provide information on their cost structures, not asking for data from the department. Senator FARUQI: Can you take on notice and provide us with the data and the analysis that has been provided to ATEC from the sector? Mr Turvey: I can. The point of the exercise is to understand cost allocation mechanisms that the universities use to ascribe their costs to different activities that they're undertaking. We've been working with a number of institutions that are offering to provide their data around how they ascribe the costs across different types of activities. We're working with them on data-sharing agreements, and, where they have given us the data, we're analysing that data and comparing it across institutions. Senator FARUQI: It's the cost and pricing working group. Is the department providing any data on pricing? Mr Turvey: No, this is an ATEC working group that's working with the sector. Ms Mohr: The department sits on the working group and is engaged in those discussions. We listen and we're an observer. Senator FARUQI: So the department has no data that is useful to ATEC in cost and pricing? Ms Mohr: What the department has data on-obviously we have information about the current contributions from the Australian government to universities for different fields of study. We have contributions to make in terms of the number of students in different courses. Senator FARUQI: Have you provided that? Mr Turvey: That's public information. We use the publicly available information. The point of this exercise is to go back to first principles and look at the cost of delivering, teaching and learning in the higher education system and to understand how the universities ascribe those costs. Senator FARUQI: If you could provide whatever data has been provided to date and any analysis, that'd be great.

Answer

Please see the attached PDF.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• SQ26-000723.pdf (opens in a new tab)