BY GRANT COLEMAN
On July 23, the ALP launched its policy for Australia's higher education system, "Aim Higher: Learning, Training and Better Jobs for More Australians". While the policy has similarities with the federal Coalition government's "Backing Australia's Future" package, it opposes the most draconian proposals.
The ALP has promised an extra $423 million in university operating funds, on top of the government's promised $1.5 billion. However, in "Aim Higher", the ALP acknowledges that since 1996, $5 billion has been cut from university operating grants. Students, staff and parents should be demanding that the ALP, at least, restores per-student funding to the 1996 rate.
Unlike the Coalition's proposed funds, the ALP's would come without strings attached. The government is attempting to tie $404 million of funding to universities implementing "workplace reform" and further corporatising governing bodies.
In "Backing Australia's Future", the government flagged its intention to re-introduce voluntary student unionism legislation (VSU). This legislation would make it harder for student organisations to be politically active, in particular, to organise students to fight conservative attacks.
The ALP's document promises that: "Labor will support the existing arrangements for membership of student organisations and oppose attempts to intervene to prevent automatic membership."
One of the most alarming proposals in "Backing Australia's Future" was the deregulation of student fees. Currently, under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), students can pay their fees through the tax system, once they earn a certain amount of money.
Under the Coalition's plan, individual universities would be able to increase fees by up to 30%, and students would pay them back through the Higher Education Loans Program. Under the HELP system students would, on average, pay for 50% of their degree costs.
"Aim Higher" promises that Labor "will not increase HECS and will not deregulate HECS fees", and "Labor will not support the introduction of a real rate of interest on loans for postgraduate courses".
The ALP also promises to abolish full-fee places for domestic undergraduate students. On top of this, 20,000 new university and 20,000 TAFE places will be funded.
"Aim Higher" commits the ALP to extending rent assistance to Austudy recipients, and also to reducing the age of independence (at which students are no longer means tested on their parents' income) from the current age of 25, to 24 in 2005, and 23 in 2007.
However, although opposing particular attacks, the policy does not deliver a real alternative to the user-pays, privatisation agenda of the government.
Section 4.2 of "Aim Higher" states: "Labor believes that Australians should not have to buy a university place when they are already contributing to our tertiary system through tax and other forms of support."
But there is no mention of abolishing HECS. Under current HECS arrangements, students are paying more than a third of the cost of their degree. The retention of HECS means students will still have to "buy a university place" — even if it is on credit.
In a media release on July 23, Greens senator Kerry Nettle, argued that "... under Labor's policy, hundreds of thousands of Australian students and their families will still struggle to live on student assistance payments and will be saddled with large debts incurred by paying HECS, a scheme the ALP introduced".
The same day that the ALP released its policy, the Australian reported that a recent study by Phillips Curran and KPA Consulting indicated that HECS had reduced the number of people from poorer families accessing higher education.
The report states that "there are growing signs that students are feeling the financial strain of study and HECS debt levels, and the sector could find itself facing a new level of price sensitivity that will deter some students from study".
The retention of HECS is not an alternate vision for Australia's higher education system, but rather the continuation of a regressive policy. There are only two options: continue down the path of user-pays and privatisation, or abolish tuition fees and return to publicly funded, free education.
In the media release, Nettle added, "redirecting the $4-a-week personal income tax cut in the 2003/04 budget would enable all HECS debt to be forgiven, abolish HECS and provide for growth, including funding an additional 50,000 university places."
The Socialist Alliance is also calling for abolition of HECS. At its conference in May, the alliance modified its education policy to read: "Socialist Alliance will fight to restore public education at all levels, creating a universal, free, quality secular system open to all those who need and want it."
While better than "Backing Australia's Future", the ALP should have aimed a lot higher than it has.
[Grant Coleman is the coordinator of the Wollongong University Resistance Club].
From Green Left Weekly, August 6, 2003.
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