A key beneficiary of the Howard Government’s bread and circuses Budget last week was higher education. The establishment of a staggering $5 billion endowment fund for capital works caused the eyes of vice-chancellors all over the country to light up. Whether electors were similarly duped by this seeming magnanimity remains to be seen.

Over the last 25 years, spending on university operating grants dropped from approximately 90% to 38%. The rate of contraction was most rapid since the Howard Government came into office in 1996. How paradoxical it is that money should be taken away with the left hand only to have some of it returned with the right — as though it were an act of benevolence!

We cannot ignore the damage that has already been done to higher education because of the contraction in funding. The sector has not only been impoverished but the very idea of education as a public good has been turned upside down.

As a result of the budget cuts, universities were forced to become market players and sell the only product they had on offer — education. As a result, students became customers, concerned more about credentialism and the ability to secure a high-paying job in order to repay their mounting education debts rather than the quality of the education itself. Full-fee courses are now offered to both domestic and international students. From 2008, the cap on the amount institutions can charge will be lifted.

In another example of reversion to the values of the 19th century, the ability to pay rather than academic excellence has once again become the criterion for admission. The egalitarian idea of free tertiary education, introduced by Gough Whitlam just over 30 years ago, now seems like a mirage.

Vice-chancellors have been remarkably supine in the destruction of our university system. Like lap dogs, they have smooched up to the Government in anticipation of the next hand-out. With few exceptions, they have been complicit in the cutting of their own operating grants, the erosion of academic freedom, the move to voluntary student unionism, the increases in Hecs, the introduction of full-fee courses and the establishment of for-profit institutions in competition with their own so-called public universities.

However, VCs alone cannot be held responsible for the transformation. The blurring of the boundary between public and private education has already occurred at the primary and secondary school level — state aid to private schools was established by the DOGS Case in 1981. This acceptance on the part of the community, with some prodding by government, has helped to normalise the privatisation of the public university.