What the article proposes (the government setting the maximum level of loan it will provide for a course) is essentially the Australian system.
The other aspects in the Australian system, though, are a "Commonwealth contribution" (part that the student does not have to pay back), an institutional maximum on how much the government will fund / underwrite that's dependent on institutional performance metrics (e.g. student employment rate on graduation), and that they alter how much students can be charged and how much the government will contribute depending on the subject area.
It gets very political and there are perverse incentives hidden in the detail.
(There's a couple of controversies in Aus higher ed at the moment. One is a lot of downsizing due to Covid affecting the international market. The other is proposed changes to the fee structure for particular courses and universities from the government.)
However, it does get universities to respond to government strategy, so I expect the people in government who run it are probably very happy.
Within government, I think they see university funding as also being one of the levers the government has to influence economic growth. For example, directing student places to a particular institution brings university jobs, students, and the students' living expenses into that university's town to grow it. By giving incentives for particular courses, they can feed particular industries with graduates, etc.
So you'll hear universities and government talk about "creating job ready graduates" (they've always talked about this), but also "creating graduate ready jobs" (universities as a mechanism for growing parts of the economy in an area)
The other aspects in the Australian system, though, are a "Commonwealth contribution" (part that the student does not have to pay back), an institutional maximum on how much the government will fund / underwrite that's dependent on institutional performance metrics (e.g. student employment rate on graduation), and that they alter how much students can be charged and how much the government will contribute depending on the subject area.
It gets very political and there are perverse incentives hidden in the detail.
(There's a couple of controversies in Aus higher ed at the moment. One is a lot of downsizing due to Covid affecting the international market. The other is proposed changes to the fee structure for particular courses and universities from the government.)
However, it does get universities to respond to government strategy, so I expect the people in government who run it are probably very happy.
Within government, I think they see university funding as also being one of the levers the government has to influence economic growth. For example, directing student places to a particular institution brings university jobs, students, and the students' living expenses into that university's town to grow it. By giving incentives for particular courses, they can feed particular industries with graduates, etc.
So you'll hear universities and government talk about "creating job ready graduates" (they've always talked about this), but also "creating graduate ready jobs" (universities as a mechanism for growing parts of the economy in an area)