Australian politicians “want it both ways” with policies that require individuals to meet more of the cost of their higher education while giving them less choice of subjects, according to a vice-chancellor who has proposed a “national skills bursary” to address student debt.

University of Canberra vice-chancellor Bill Shorten said the current approach is backfiring, denying the country the “sovereign skills” it “desperately” needs.

He has proposed a slimmed-down version of Australia’s 1990s training levy as a “direct countermeasure” to ballooning student debt, which grew beyond A$76 billion (£38 billion) this year.

While 20 per cent of current debt will be waived under a pre-election promise from the federal government, incoming students face record tuition costs – particularly humanities students, who will pay A$17,399 next year, as a legacy of the Job-ready Graduates reforms that oriented fees around national rather than individual priorities.

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International students are also being shepherded into disciplines of Australian national need, despite paying higher fees than ever. “The assumption [is], ‘we’ll tell you what our priorities are, but you’ve got to pay for it,” said Shorten, a former federal opposition leader. “It’s a bit like saying…‘we’d like you to put the fire out, but could you please bring your own truck and hose?’”

Under Shorten’s proposed “national skills bursary”, industry and government would subsidise courses that address specified skills gaps in health, mining and defence technology. Although the idea bears similarities to the Training Guarantee, a short-lived 1990s scheme that required companies to spend a minimum percentage of their payroll on training, Shorten said there would be significant differences.

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For a start, the government would not act as a “receptacle” of the money, ensuring a “leaner” and “more direct” arrangement where companies could “see what they’re buying”.

Universities would need to be clear about what they were “bringing to the party”, he told ����Vlog. “It’s not good enough that we’re good people and we’re morally upright and pure. We need…a value proposition [in] which industry can see their own interests and the national interest.

“Universities need to remake their case for what they can do for the national good, which is both public and private. Arguing that we serve the national interest…might help [move] us beyond the current impasse where we’re just sort of being chipped away about social licence.”

Australian business “has to make money”, Shorten stressed. “The problem is, how do we get over short-termism in decision-making? I don’t know if industry will go with this. It’s a long conversation. But…we have to convince companies – the shareholders, the equity owners – that money wouldn’t get wasted in government administration.”

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He believes the “structural fragility” of Australia’s economy – reflected in the , which ranks the country 105th out of 145 nations and territories – is the “single greatest threat” to its long-term security. The antidote lies in equipping Australians to produce the “diversified portfolio of products and services” that would make the country “less susceptible to economic and political shocks”, he recently  the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

It could ultimately be a matter of survival, Shorten added, citing the internal productive capacity that has so far kept Ukraine from being overrun. “The best way to defend your country is actually to discourage anyone else from thinking they could attack it,” Shorten told THE. “You do your best preparation, ideally, before there’s an argument.”

His bursary, initially at least, would be confined to national priority areas determined by the government. “Start very focused and see how it goes,” he said. “Australians will get behind good ideas in my experience, but they like to…see it work first. You’re better off to under-promise and over-deliver.”

He said the government would also have to fund more subsidised university places as an inevitable function of demographic growth and workforce reforms such as tertiary harmonisation. “We are just getting bigger. Like building more public transport or building more houses, we are going to need to build more commonwealth-supported places.”

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com