BY PETER ROBSON
Filled with confidence from its apparent "success" in waging war on Iraq, the Howard Coalition government has began another assault on public services. Higher education in particular is under attack, with the worst proposals from federal education minister Brendan Nelson being endorsed in treasurer Peter Costello's May 13 budget.
Costello announced a ten-year plan to "deregulate" higher education and transform the university sector into one divided into elite and substandard universities.
Heading up the changes are massive increases to student fees. Currently, most university students pay for education through the Higher Education Contributions Scheme (HECS), which requires students to pay back about a third of the cost of their degree through a non-interest bearing loan indexed to the consumer price index.
Some students opt to pay HECS upfront, and get a 25% discount, while the majority begin repaying their loan when they earn at least $24,365. This income threshold will change to $30,000 under the budget proposal, and HECS will be renamed HELP — Higher Education Loan Program.
The changes proposed in the budget would allow universities to charge up to 30% more for than current HECS levels for popular courses. This builds on an already tiered structure, introduced in 1997, when courses deemed to result in higher paying jobs have a higher HECS fee.
Under the budget proposal, courses in law, dentistry and medicine, which currently attract a HECS fee of $6136 a year, could increase to $8355 a year. The only courses exempt from the "optional" 30% increase are education and nursing, which will remain at $3854 a year. Starved of government funds, university administrations are likely to implement the 30% "optional" fee increase.
The cost of degrees such as veterinary science could increase to $100,000. For popular degrees like law, it's estimated that students will be paying up to 80% of the cost of their degree.
When the Labor government introduced the HECS system in 1989, it reduced participation by students from poorer families by up to 12%. Further increases in HECS will only further reduce access by working-class students to university.
In addition to the increases, the education package doubles the number of university places available to upfront-fee payers, from 25% to 50%. Twice as many students will be forced to pay the entire cost of their degree before beginning study (and that incorporates the 30% hike). Students will have to compete harder for the deferred HECS-funded places, making tertiary education even more inaccessible for the poor.
In order to "help" students pay for the increased fees, Fee-HELP loans of up to $50,000 will be available to full-fee paying students, repayable over 10 years at an interest rate of 3.5% per annum. What the government isn't telling people is that the loans will be indexed to inflation and therefore the interest charged will be more like 6% per annum.
For most students this will be like having a mortgage without the benefits of owning a house. For the more popular and expensive degrees the loan won't even cover the costs, placing them far beyond the reach of most people from poorer, working-class backgrounds.
While the budget projects an increase in funding for universities of $1.45 billion, this will be spread over four years. Even with the increase, government funding will still remain at 1.5% of GDP — far behind that of most other developed capitalist countries.
Core funding for universities will change dramatically, with a new grants scheme replacing block funding. Block funding traditionally covered the costs of teaching, administration and research. The new grants will not cover research — a review of research funding arrangements has been deferred.
Universities will have to sign agreements with the government setting out the number of student places and the mix of disciplines they will offer. If they deviate more than 2% from this agreement, they will face penalties.
What's more, $404 million — almost a third of new funding — is tied to university administrations successfully implementing the government's anti-union policies, under which university employees will be offered individual contracts and "voluntary student unionism" is to be enforced.
The government will attempt to amend the Workplace Relations Act to define universities as "essential services" — because their activities affect clients of health, community services or education systems, i.e., students. This will mean that protected industrial action by the members of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union will be outlawed. This represents a major attack on the NTEU, which has campaigned for improved wages and conditions for university employees, and has supported students in their campaigns.
University councils will be forced to become more like corporate boardrooms, with faculty and student representatives replaced by members who represent "the interests of the university as whole". This is because management and teachers almost always find themselves at loggerheads in university councils.
Academics, staff and students see universities as teaching, learning and research institutions, while management sees universities as potential profit-making enterprises. Removing staff and student representatives will make it easier for management to implement cost-cutting and revenue-raising measures.
These changes have met with approval from the Group of Eight vice-chancellors, representing the more prestigious "sandstone" universities. Alan Gilbert, chairperson of the Group of Eight and vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, said that "if it means that universities have to be able to offer individual contracts, many of us are already doing that in substantial numbers".
All these changes combined will result in a two-tiered system of tertiary education. Universities with more prestige and resources will be able to attract more students and therefore raise their fees. This in turn will mean that they have more resources and be able to provide a higher quality of education.
Smaller or more regional universities will have to compete will most likely have to opt for a "no-frills" style of teaching, with fewer resources, fewer students and fewer teaching staff.
Coalition ministers are so inflated with confidence after the Iraq war that Nelson has declared that they are willing to go to a double dissolution election if the education package is not accepted in its entirety by the Senate. So far, the Greens and the Democrats have declared their intention to block the package completely and risk double-dissolution election, but the real question is what the ALP will do.
When shadow education minister Jenny Macklin was asked whether Labor would be prepared to force a double-dissolution election, she stated simply that Labor didn't want to see students and working people pay more for higher education.
The Coalition parties need only four extra votes in the Senate to pass the changes. Independent senators Brian Harradine, Shayne Murphy and Meg Lees have yet to commit one way or another.
Student opposition on the streets is already being organised. A students' small and regional campus conference has called for protest action against the changes on May 22, which has been supported by most student unions. The National Tertiary Education Industry Union has also come out unequivocally against the changes and will hopefully support protests against them.
In a Greens' press release on the budget, a very important point was made for the education movement. The income tax cuts proposed by the government and the much-lauded budget surplus are enough to completely fund higher education. HECS, up-front fees, student loans could all be abolished. The vision of fully publicly funded higher education could be realised.
If students and staff organise to fight and defeat the government's attacks, then the fight for free education could be renewed. It is possible and something we must aim for.
[Peter Robson is the Newcastle University student education officer and a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]
From Green Left Weekly, May 21, 2003.
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