· The Coalition government originally set up the Higher Education Endowment Fund (HEEF) with an initial capital of $5 billion and a subsequent contribution of $1 billion to provide universities with regular, long-term source of infrastructure funding. Each year, the Fund’s interest was to be distributed to finance new projects, while the capital would stay secure and untouched, and would keep growing with additional future contributions from the government.
Upon coming into government, Labor with great fanfare renamed HEEF the Education Investment Fund, made it a centrepiece of its “nation building package”, and promised to top up the Fund with an extra $5 billion to take the total up to $11 billion.
Education Department officials were forced to admit that the Rudd government has not contributed one cent to the fund, breaking their promise to put an extra $5 billion into the fund.
The Fund currently stands at only $5.868 billion. $3.95 billion out of the Fund has already been committed by the Rudd government to various projects, of which $941 million has been dispersed from the Fund to finance higher education, VET and Clean Energy Initiative projects. That only leaves about $2 billion in the EIF. At this rate, the Fund that was meant to last forever will be completely gone by next year.