Charles Sturt University is happy overall with new performance-related funding from the federal government, but hopes certain sections of the scheme are not biased against regional universities.
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Vice-Chancellor Professor Andrew Vann was in Woolongong this week as Education Minister Dan Tehan revealed the plan, which puts an end to a two-year freeze on funding increases.
"At this stage we're pretty happy, but we certainly want to go through the detail," he told The Border Mail on Thursday.
"They've set it up in such a way that it is really trying to get people to do the best they can, so I think it is a good scheme. It's very welcome to get some funding back into the sector because we've been frozen."
He said the scheme had the correct four set of indicators for a performance-related system.
CSU expects to get full funding in the area of enrollment of Indigenous, disadvantaged and rural students because it sits above average.
Mr Vann said the student success measure, looking at the dropout rates of domestic first-year students, "kind of looks like it might be biased against regional universities" but he wanted to see more details.
He said although the number of CSU graduates getting jobs was very good, he had concerns the university's success would be measured against local unemployment rates and its own job rate may have to be close to 100 per cent.
"If it's actually setting the bar in a place nobody can actually reasonably meet that doesn't seem fair," he said.
"We've got the best full-time employment rate in the country and are either second or first in terms of overall employment."
Universities only have a few weeks to give their feedback before the scheme is finalised ahead of the 2020 school year.
Mr Vann said the university had ongoing plans for its Albury campus and wanted to be involved in improvements to the Border coming under the federal government's regional deal.
"I think they're still trying to work out where they're going with that. The focus we now have from state and federal governments on regional Australia and regional NSW we're really pleased about. We really see a lot of opportunity," he said.
"Albury-Wodonga is growing very strongly ... Right across our campus footprint we're trying to look at what's the future going to be and how can we work with our communities."