By Rob Miller
With the ALP federal government planning to cut expenditure, funding for higher education is under further threat. The preparations for further cutbacks began in 1994 with the commissioning of reports on "Resource Allocation in Higher Education" and "Fee-paying Arrangements for Postgraduate Courses". These reports justified the government's position that there is no need for increasing funding for higher education.
Underpinning the government's position is the "fact" that most of those who attend higher education are from middle to high income backgrounds, and will graduate into high-paying jobs. This "fact" was used to justify making students pay for education through the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS).
Prior to the introduction of HECS in 1989, the government argued that the abolition of tuition fees in 1974 did not significantly increase the participation of working-class people in higher education. It claimed that since the affluent were over-represented in higher education, publicly subsidised free higher education represented a regressive transfer from working-class taxpayers to well-off students.
This argument provides the basis for ruling out extra higher education funding and allowing fees to be charged for postgraduate courses. It will no doubt be the central argument for the introduction of up-front fees for undergraduates when the government gets to that measure.
The government will undoubtedly characterise any opposition as coming from self-interested rich kids. In order to counter its claims in relation to funding, fees and access, it is necessary to question the arguments and "facts" which underpin the government's policy.
Real funding decline
The higher education system has expanded massively in the last decade, with total enrolments almost doubling between 1982 and 1994. The government claims this was brought about by a massive increase in public funding and that its commitment to funding higher education is amongst the highest in the OECD.
By focusing on the total amount of higher education funding, the government hides the fact that the real level of funding per student declined from $10,243 in 1980 to only $8713 in 1990 (Marginson, "Education & Public Policy", 1993). In addition, when factors such as funding for research, Austudy payments and students' own contributions, via HECS, are taken into account, Australia does not compare so well internationally.
If the HECS component of government expenditure is removed, then the full extent of the reduction of government funding can be seen. Expenditure for university education activities (which excludes research funding and Austudy payments) has dropped from $6649 per student in 1987-88 to $5316 per student in 1991-92, a reduction of 20% in four years. On this basis, Australia ranked last of 14 OECD countries in 1992 in terms of public funding per student relative to per capita GDP (Murphy, "Resource Allocation in Higher Education", 1994).
So the expansion of higher education has been funded by students, not the government. This fits the whole "user pays" philosophy promoted by the ALP. The idea ignores the fact that education is fundamental to people's ability to participate fully in society and therefore should be available to all. Making the user pay ensures that only those who can pay will be able to use.
Taxation
The alternative to user pays is free government services funded by a tax system which ensures that all people pay according to their ability to do so. If the government was really concerned about the upper and middle classes paying for their higher education, it would simply increase taxes on these groups rather than introducing fees.
Every measure taken to make the rich pay directly for higher education, rather than through taxation, acts to exclude working-class people from higher education.
The argument that the absence of up-front fees made little difference to working-class participation, and therefore reintroducing them will have no impact, is a deliberate oversimplification.
One significant effect of the abolition of fees, which the government ignores, was a dramatic increase in the participation of women in higher education.
The statement that removing fees did not significantly increase the participation of working class people in higher education is correct. But this fact alone doesn't prove that fees were not a barrier to working-class participation; it only proves that they were not the only barrier.
The government chooses to ignore the other barriers to participation in higher education that existed in 1974 and still exist today. It does so because acknowledging these barriers would place pressure on the government to remove them.
The most obvious such barrier was the fact that government schools were not, in general, geared towards preparing students for higher education. This didn't change overnight with the abolition of fees. It was reflected in the number of students who completed year 12. In 1981, for example, only 28% of all government school students completed year 12, compared to 57% of private school students.
This disparity was further exacerbated by the steady decline in education funding from both state and federal governments between 1975 and 1991. This under-funding of government schools was, and still is, a significant barrier to working-class participation in tertiary education.
The other barrier to working-class people is the need to support themselves while studying. The Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme (TEAS) was introduced in 1974 to try to address this. However, its effectiveness was undermined by the fact that the maximum rate was initially set at just over 75% of the poverty line and by 1985 had fallen to around half the level of the poverty line.
In comparison with unemployment benefits TEAS declined from 103% of unemployment benefit in 1974 to just over 85% in 1982. The fact that TEAS was less than unemployment benefits from 1975 until the introduction of Austudy in 1987 represented a significant barrier to working-class participation. The maximum rate of Austudy was still only 60% of the poverty line in 1992, and this, combined with its other inadequacies, means it still represents a barrier to participation.
In addition, the Labor government's funding cuts have made it much harder for those working-class people who do get in. The decline in funding and huge increase in student numbers have resulted in overcrowding and inadequate library resources.
The use of computers in virtually every discipline has also made students reliant on inadequate university computer facilities. Students on low incomes can't afford to buy books and computers and have to waste a lot of time trying to access them. Another result of funding cuts is that students are also now expected to pay for course materials which were previously free.
The government's refusal to acknowledge these barriers is also justified in terms of the user pays philosophy: the rich must be forced to use their private resources to support their children and to meeting the costs of textbooks, computers and class materials. The rich can, but the poor can't.
The other effect of funding cuts has been to force universities to find non-government sources of funds such as full-fee-paying international students and selling services to industry. Making universities chase private funding has changed the focus of higher education from learning to earning and has led to students with special needs being regarded as more costly than other students.
vice-chancellors
The government has given vice-chancellors the "discretion" to introduce postgraduate fees, knowing full well that while universities are starved of funds, they have no choice but to raise as much money as possible. This is a deliberate ploy to absolve the government of responsibility for these fees.
The government is obviously hoping the student movement will focus its attacks on vice-chancellors. This would let the ALP off the hook and, more importantly, would be totally useless, since the vice-chancellors cannot increase funding, abolish HECS or increase Austudy.
In order to oppose the introduction of up-front fees effectively, it is necessary to reassert the right to free, accessible and fully funded public education and not concede any ground to the ALP's user pays arguments.
It is in the interests of both students and education workers to win broader community support for adequate funding for primary, secondary and tertiary education, the abolition of TAFE tuition fees and HECS and increasing Austudy to at least the poverty line.
These measures should be funded by increasing taxes on the rich and big business. The alternative is to let the government's user pays philosophy gradually suffocate publicly funded education.