Policy Paper

11 Higher Education Information Management System

The introduction of a Learning Entitlement, scholarships and the increased range of loans that students can access, needs to be underpinned by a more sophisticated higher education management information system than currently operates. All students currently receive student numbers when they enrol at a higher education institution to assist internal administrative procedures. The Commonwealth will provide students with an additional student number which will stay with the student throughout their academic life, allowing eligibility to Commonwealth support to be facilitated and monitored.

The management information system needs to be capable of managing a diverse range of student programmes including the Learning Entitlement, the Higher Education Loan Programme, and the Commonwealth Learning Scholarships Programme. In an environment of greater diversity and specialisation between institutions, it must be able to provide prospective students with detailed institutional and course information to help them make decisions, and to give them information on their individual entitlements and financial obligations once their decisions are made.

A new web-based system, the Higher Education Information Management System (HEIMS), will be established and will include a range of modules to:

• provide students with timely, accessible and accurate information about course offerings, Commonwealth and student contributions to course costs, loan details and institutional performance;

• enable the efficient and effective management of Commonwealth student loans and higher education entitlements (including scholarships);

• provide institutions with timely, accessible and accurate information about institutional performance, payments and competitive funding initiatives; and

• provide one entry-point for institutions to input statistical data; financial management reporting; and programme management reporting.

Rather than establish a new layer of bureaucracy through a separate data agency, the Commonwealth will streamline its own data collection and will develop a joint strategy on data collection with the sector.

The effective operation of HEIMS will require all existing and new students accessing Commonwealth supported places or Commonwealth student loans to be issued with a Commonwealth Higher Education Student Support Number (CHESSN). This number will be limited in its use to HEIMS and protected under Commonwealth privacy legislation.

The public higher education institutions will receive approximately $200,000 each in 2003–04 as a contribution to the costs of implementation of HEIMS and the new student financing initiatives.

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