Universities hammered by coronavirus border closures will be thrown a lifeline in next week's federal budget.
Universities hammered by coronavirus border closures will be thrown a lifeline in next week's federal budget.
Education Minister Dan Tehan has promised an extra $326 million to provide more domestic student places.
The money is expected to cover 12,000 new spots.
Mr Tehan is also enticing universities with $900 million in grants over four years.
To score a slice of the Commonwealth cash, universities will need to work with local industries on areas such as curriculums and employment links for graduates.
But universities who fail to meet the requirements could have the funding withheld.
Mr Tehan made the pre-budget announcements in a speech focused heavily on student fee reforms.
The changes are aimed at funnelling university students into supposedly job-ready degrees.
Legislation before parliament would cut fees for courses such as science and engineering and jack up the cost of law and humanities units.
The minister believes the shake-up will create tens of thousands of places and leave universities no worse off.
But Margaret Gardner, who represents the Group of Eight universities, warns the institutions could lose tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
Ms Gardner said there would an average of six per cent less funding for every Australian university student.
She said that on average, students would be asked to pay a much higher proportion of the cost for their degrees, while also highlighting glaring inequities.
Forty per cent of students would end up paying much more.
"It seems to me demonstrably unfair that some students should pay over 90 per cent of the cost of their degrees and others well under 50 per cent of the cost of the degree," Ms Gardner told ABC radio.
The minister argues the changes are aimed at encouraging students to pick up a few job-ready subjects, rather than switching degrees altogether.
But Ms Gardner said there was no evidence to suggest the changes would cause students to choose different subjects.
"What it will do is burden some students with a much higher debt when they finish university," she said.
Ms Gardner said legislation would also cut government contributions to academic areas it wanted students to focus on.
"There is actually less funding to teach engineering and science in this package in the future than there is currently," she said.
"These are the flaws in the design that need to be fixed."
More than 11,000 university staff have been sacked during the coronavirus pandemic and there are fears many more jobs could still be lost.
Public universities have not been included in the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme.
Instead, the Commonwealth guaranteed their full government funding allocation for the year, regardless of domestic student numbers.
Mr Tehan indicated this commitment would now stretch to 2024.
