Education: the numbers still don't add up

The Liberal government has just announced in its budget that it will be putting $5 billion in a Higher Education Fund.

While it is true that investment in education is about the best way for a government to spend money, something Howard et al have neglected to date, this fund will only spend at most the profits from the fund on universities.

This means that the $5 billion will not be spent on universities but invested in the market. I don't know where the money from the Future Fund is invested but the same people will be investing our tax dollars from the Higher Education fund as well.

As they are appointed by Howard et al it is not unreasonable to wonder where the money is going. Regardless it is not actually going to universities. It does sound impressive though so it has served its purpose.

The reality is that even with the new money from this budget the proportion of GDP spent on education has still decreased over the period of the Howard government from 2 percent to 1.6 percent.

This lack of investment in education will have a long term detrimental effect on Australia's productivity and our competitiveness.

Assuming of course we have a long term given the complete lack of attention giving to addressing global warming in the budget.