. @JacquiLambie this morning asked whether the government’s claim that its Jobs Ready Graduate package would create 100,000 additional places had been ‘plucked out of their clacker’. This is why the design of the package makes that number so uncertain 1/…

The uncertainty comes from the interaction of two factors: 1) the government’s previous decision to cap total government funding for places and 2) the drastically different rates at which places in different areas of study will be funded under this package.

In 2017 the government decided to end the demand driven system and put a cap on the total amount of funding it would provide for university places. This package maintains the policy of capping funding in any given year.

The big change in this package is providing very different levels of funding for places depending on their subject area (and along with it, very different fee levels).

The government will provide only $1,100pa for law, economics, business and most humanities and social sciences students, compared to $13,500pa for teaching and maths, $16,500pa for nursing, engineering and science, and $27,400pa for agriculture and medicine.

How many places are created depends on what courses students are enrolled in. Perversely, due to the overall cap, universities can create more funded places if they enrol more students in courses with low government contributions.

The potential difference in funded places is quite extreme. Eg: for any given $100,000 of government funding, universities can create 90 funded places in law, economics, business, humanities and social sciences, or 6 places in nursing, engineering and science.

So, this package can indeed increase funded places, but only if universities limit enrolments in the government’s stated ‘priority areas’, and expand enrolments in high fee courses. And any such increase will be over 90% funded by larger and longer HECS debts for students.