By Lana Halpin
BRISBANE — Andrew Norton's article "Fee students help all", which appeared in the April 14 Courier-Mail, is evidence of the Liberal government's vision for the future of education. Norton advocates the deregulation of the education sector, resulting in a free market where university places are available to the highest bidder.
Norton, editor of the Policy Journal of the Centre for Independent Studies, criticises student activists in Sydney for protesting before the University of Sydney senate had made its final decision on the introduction of full-fee degrees.
However, the ability of universities to make these changes was in last year's federal budget, making student protest far from pre-emptive. Demonstrators were expressing legitimate anger over the implementation of full-fee paying undergraduate degrees and were making a concerted attempt to prevent the university introducing such changes.
Norton claims that "budgetary difficulties" and the level of the foreign debt forced the Coalition to allow the implementation of full-fee degrees. This ignores the fact that it is large corporations and companies that are the largest foreign debtors. Very few Australians owe any foreign debt.
However, if we sink to the level of Norton's thinking and accept that debt and "budgetary difficulties" are the problem, what other solutions are available to the government? Why not divert the massive amounts of money spent on "defence" to the education sector?
In 1993-94 Australia's 459,797 companies earned a total income of $779.8 billion. These companies should have paid $24.6 billion in tax to the government; instead they paid only $14.5 billion. The government could easily wipe out its claimed $9-10 billion budget "black hole".
Quality education requires money. This is not disputed by those opposed to full-fee university places. What is in dispute is where the money should come from: from taxes on the profits of big business and the affluent, or from the pockets of students and parents, thus favouring only those who can afford to purchase it?
Norton states, referring to universities, "They are not like normal businesses". When did universities depart from their role as educational institutions? Universities are there to educate, not to suck money from students in the name of increased profits. The idea that universities should be focusing on how to make money rather than how to improve the quality of education is absurd.
Norton theorises that a student who is "keen and committed enough to pay full fees is likely to put in a lot more effort than someone who could not think of a better course to do". Keenness and commitment to study are not the same as the ability to spend large sums of money to buy your way into university.
Norton asserts that full-fee places will deter students with "poor prospects for graduation". Will fees deter the academically inept but highly affluent student? Of course not. The students forced out of further study will be those who cannot afford to pay fees and eat and pay rent at the same time.
The availability of both full-fee and HECS courses simultaneously will create two tiers within university education: one level for the rich, funded by full fees, and one for everyone else, funded by HECS and whatever remains of public funding.
In justifying education being sold to the rich, Norton helpfully admits that "any kind of wealth difference is unfair", but argues that since the rich can buy almost anything, why should they be forbidden from buying education? Why should a student should miss out on university by just one mark, he asks.
Many students miss out on university placements precisely because of decreased quotas due to lack of government funding. That an elite few, thanks solely to their wealth, should be admitted to university whilst equally capable but less affluent students are denied a place is what students are protesting about.