Charles Sturt University (CSU) Acting Vice-Chancellor Professor Ken Dillon has welcomed the release on Monday 21 September 2015 of the Australian Labor Party's (ALP) higher education policy, particularly its acknowledgement of the continued barriers faced by rural, regional and Indigenous students in accessing the education and qualifications needed by the modern labour market.

Professor Dillon said, "CSU also welcomes the commitment from the ALP to increase per-student funding. In the increasingly competitive higher education sector, university budgets have become further stretched, and additional revenue is needed to retain a high international standard for the Australian university sector. However, further discussion is required to ensure a strong budgetary footing for the sector as a whole. Additionally, per-student funding is only one aspect of the university funding equation, and stronger support for research is also a necessity.

The ALP's renewed focus on completion rates and the post-study employment success rates of university graduates is also encouraging as it is a factor given increasing emphasis by prospective students. As a university committed to providing the skills and qualifications needed for regional communities and labour markets, CSU is pleased to see this vital aspect of tertiary study and national need gain attention.

However, CSU is wary of the forecast reintroduction of compacts, as our previous experiences demonstrated they are unnecessary. Discussion of incentives to drive completion rates within reintroduced compacts must also be carefully designed with input from the sector, as previous suggestions in this area have threatened to overburden and over regulate an already heavily regulated area.

CSU also acknowledges the policy's commitment to growth in areas of national priority. However, as Australia's largest regional university we are well aware that priority areas change greatly depending on region and event community. While we support the principle of growth in areas of need, the identification of such needs cannot be achieved at the macro-level and must take into count regional and rural community requirements as they differ from the circumstances of metropolitan centres, which is not immediately clear in the released policy.

CSU looks forward to continuing to work with the Federal Opposition on higher education, as we do with the government, in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for our regional and rural students, our communities and the higher education sector."