By Nikki Ulasowski
"No cuts, No fees, Hands off Austudy!" will be one of the main catchcries of nationwide demonstrations by students, academic and general staff on August 7. The demonstrations involve stop-work meetings, pickets, rallies and marches, organised by the National Tertiary Education and Industry Union (NTEU) and students in support of the NTEU's 15% pay claim and against the Howard government's attacks on the higher education sector.
In May, at a dinner with members of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, Senator Amanda Vanstone, the minister for employment, education, training and youth affairs, indicated that the Liberals were planning to make cuts to the higher education budget of up to 12%. This sparked an alliance against the cuts of vice-chancellors, students, academic and general staff, who protested on a national scale in some of the biggest demonstrations in defence of education in nearly a decade.
Since the May demonstrations, the alliance has been on shaky ground. Some vice-chancellors have succumbed to pressure from Vanstone to accept the government funding cuts and have students pay the difference in the form of up-front fees and through lowering the earnings threshold for payment of HECS debts. In addition, the government has flagged plans to make Austudy a loans scheme and abolish it altogether for secondary students.
Since HECS was introduced in 1989, the neo-liberal ideologues have mounted a concerted attack against free education and argued for the acceptance of a user-pays education system. However, it is not all that long ago that students fought in their tens of thousands to defend free education, introduced by the Whitlam government in the 1970s.
Students have traditionally defended equity and access to education as a public resource. A quality education system, accessible to all regardless of their income, is one of the foundations on which a society's economic, cultural and social development should be based. The HECS scheme and up-front fees threaten this concept of education because people who should be able to study at university, and who would give some of the benefits of that education back to society, will not be able to because they can't afford to attend.
If Austudy is cut or made into a loans scheme, it will further restrict higher education to the rich. With a combination of an Austudy loan and HECS, a student will emerge from a four-year degree with an average debt of $46,000 — more, if they take longer than the average time to complete their degree. It will mean that a significant number of students, who through Austudy support might have been able to complete their degree, will probably drop out altogether.
The neo-liberals argue that students should pay towards the cost of their education. Students involved in the fight for free education argued that if Australia had a progressive taxation system in place, then students, who because of their education could get higher paying jobs, would automatically be paying money toward the cost of their education. They argued that HECS was in fact a graduate tax, to be paid on top of the tax they would already pay as workers; since it was industry which benefited most from an educated work force, industry should pay more toward the cost of education. Instead, under the Labor government, the corporate tax rate declined from 49% to 36%, while the graduate tax continues to rise.
The neo-liberals also argue that HECS does not discriminate against anybody because it can be paid later, when a graduate is earning a sufficient amount of money. However, HECS clearly discriminates against poor students because there is a discount of 25% for those rich enough to be able to pay HECS up front.
In addition, the Liberal government has floated plans to increase HECS and/or to lower the amount a graduate student needs to earn before beginning to repay the HECS debt. The very fact that the Liberals are looking at lowering the payment threshold indicates that graduate students have much less chance of getting a high paying job than they did 10 years ago.
Even though the number of women in tertiary education has increased over the last five years, women will suffer more financial difficulty in repaying their HECS debt than men. Women are more likely to be part-time workers, earning wages much lower than men's, which means they will take longer to pay off the debt.
The attacks on tertiary education come at a time of high unemployment and savage government attacks on youth wages, the TAFE sector and apprentices, labour market programs, trade unions, youth services, social security and the health care system. In fact, defence will be the only area of government spending that will not be cut in the August budget.
While cutting back on areas that all Australian taxpayers benefit from, the government will increase military ties with the brutal Indonesian regime, and continue to finance harmful industries such as woodchipping. In this broader context, the Liberals' attacks against universities can be seen as part of an overall strategy that puts business profits before working people.
Fearful of a large fight back from a higher education sector united in opposition to the cuts, the Howard government is not willing to disclose beforehand the extent of the cuts or how much money it expects from students. However, one thing is certain: the Liberals' plan is to continue at a faster pace down the track of the previous Labor government in cutting funding to education and, by way of student fees and attacks on Austudy, restricting access to universities to the rich.
To win, students, university academics and general staff need to unite in their opposition to the cuts as well as to increasing students fees, HECS and attacks on Austudy. Also key to the strategy for defeating the government's attacks on tertiary education is linking up with other sectors under threat from Howard's agenda. After the August 7 mobilisations, students will take part in demonstration against the cuts in the coming budget.