Productivity growth over the past decade was the weakest in six decades, and we know that improving productivity is essential to maintaining a high standard of living and ensuring more opportunity for all Australians. This task is one of the biggest challenges facing our nation, and it will require the collaboration of government, industry, education providers and workforces to help solve Australia’s productivity challenge.
Australia’s universities have a key role to play in our economic development and success. The Productivity Commission has long acknowledged this and has noted that universities contribute to Australia’s productivity performance by:
- building the skills and capacity of our future workforce
- generating and disseminating research and ideas, and
- building ties, understanding and goodwill with people from other nations.
The Australian Universities Accord Final Report noted that in a more complex and contested world, more knowledge, skills and research will be needed to prevent Australia’s productivity, innovation and standard of living from declining. The Accord found that the higher education system needs to both improve and significantly grow to facilitate this.
Our sector strongly supports the reform and growth objectives of the Accord and believes that a financially sound, growing and dynamic tertiary education system is a fundamental enabling tool in delivering on the ambitions of the Government’s productivity agenda.
This submission broadly outlines priority areas of reform to help enable universities to skill Australia’s future workforce, generate new ideas and products through research and engage with the world to make our economy more prosperous and productive. Universities Australia would welcome the opportunity to work directly with the Productivity Commission to drive productivity-enhancing reforms to support a modern and prosperous economy.
