Minister Clare recently announced the creation of 9,500 “extra” places at University for 2026.  Unfortunately, all is not as it might seem.

A causal reader might naturally assume that these “extra” places come with Government funding.  Would that this were true.  For universities already at their government funding cap, these extra places come with no increase in the Government contribution, only the student contribution.  Universities currently nominally below their funding cap are currently receiving the full amount anyway under the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee scheme, so they won’t receive addition government funding for these places either. The sector is taking on additional load with only partial funding for these students.

Moreover, these “extra” places don’t really exist in any meaningful sense.  Minister Clare states that this purported increase comes from ATEC “allocating” these places “on top of 2025 levels”.  The problem with this is that ATEC as currently constituted has no authority to allocate places.  This is because the legislation that will authorise it to do so has not even been published, let alone passed by Parliament.

The terms of reference for the interim ATEC are restricted to consultative and advisory functions. 

The critical point here is that these “extra” places are actually an informal and unlegislated restriction on new enrolments.  Under the current legislation, universities can theoretically enrol as many Commonwealth-Supported students as they like, albeit only receiving the student contribution once they reach their government contribution cap.  The 9,500 places are not an increase; they are a restriction on this capacity.

The Interim ATEC has negotiated these restrictions with individual universities, but they currently have no legislative force and are certainly not an “allocation of places”.

Indeed, in the absence of the legislation, there are important questions to consider about how these restrictions comply with consumer and competition legislation, as they could be seen as forcing cartel-type behaviour on the sector by restricting competition.