BY GRANT COLEMAN
In his May 13 budget speech, treasurer Peter Costello announced a 10-year package of reforms to Australia's higher education system, Our Universities: Backing Australia's Future. This package, the end result of the 12-month Higher Education at the Crossroads review, conducted by federal education minister Brendan Nelson, has lived up to the fears of students, staff and parents.
Heading up the changes are massive increases to student fees. Currently, most university students pay for their 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.
The changes proposed in the budget would allow universities to charge up to 30% more than current HECS levels. Squeezed of government funds over the last seven years, university administrations are likely to implement the full 30% fee increase.
In addition to the fee increases, the education package doubles the number of university places available to upfront-fee payers, from 25% to 50%. Twice as many students will have no option but to pay the entire cost of their degree before beginning study.
In order to "help" students pay for the increased fees, 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.
In submissions to last year's review, both student and staff organisations called for an immediate injection of $1 billion of public funds to help ease the university funding crisis that the government had created. In response, the government has made a lot of noise about its projected $1.45 billion increase in public funding. However, with every Costello budget, you can guarantee that for every carrot there are a lot more sticks.
The government is making far less noise about the fact that this funding increase will be spread over four years with the majority of funds not coming until 2007. The National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) has also claimed that all but $69 million of the promised funds will not be available until after the next election — due by the end of 2004.
The other major attack contained in the government's package is on staff and student unions. If universities want to see $404 million of the funding increase, they must first demonstrate that they are "actively offering individual employment arrangements to employees".
The package states that "the government will be introducing legislation to ensure that membership of student organisations is optional and universities do not collect fees that are not directly related to course provision. Institutions would be penalised for breaches of the legislation."
At the crossroads
At the heart of the government's argument for the deregulation of higher education is the idea that Australia's university system is at the "crossroads". Similar sentiments have been voiced by university administrations, big business spokespeople and the corporate media as well as by students and staff. But there are big differences about which direction to head in.
In his October 11, 2001, Keith Murdoch Memorial Oration, News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch called for less emphasis on the number of universities and university places offered and more emphasis on creating "world class universities". This "vision" was immediately adopted by the Group of Eight university administrations, the Business Council of Australia and the corporate media.
In a press release the very next day, then-education minister David Kemp declared that "the Howard government is committed to backing Australia's ability, so that we as a community may, as Rupert Murdoch said, 'protect and increase Australia's share of human capital as carefully, and as ambitiously, as we would financial capital'".
Pleased with Nelson's proposals, the May 15 editorial of the Murdoch-owned Australian declared its support for Our Universities: Backing Australia's Future. Under the heading "Setting the universities of Australia free", the editorial claimed that "despite the chorus of aggrieved special pleading from university staff and students, the package of higher education reforms announced in the budget are long overdue... a chance that all who believe Australia needs a world-class university system must embrace."
However, most students and staff would argue that a world-class university system will not be the result of Nelson's proposed package.
When the Labor government introduced the HECS system in 1989, it reduced participation by students from poorer families by up to 12%. According to the National Union of Students (NUS), the number of bachelor degrees per 100 persons of graduation age in Australia has dropped from 36 to 28 since 1996. Further increases in HECS will only further reduce access by working-class students to university.
The end result of Nelson's proposals will be the establishment of a two-tiered higher education system, or even a three-tiered system like that in the United States. There, students have three options — low quality, community college education for $2000, decent quality public education for $8000 or, for the wealthy few, a "world-class" education at $31,000.
User pays
The real debate between students and staff, on the one hand, and vice-chancellors, the government and the big end of town on the other, is over who should carry the financial burden of funding Australia's higher education system.
After the Whitlam Labor government introduced the Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme in 1974, which meant the practical abolition of tuition fees, there were improvements in the number of women, mature age students, people from working-class backgrounds, students with English as a second language, and other under-represented groups" participating in higher education, both universities and colleges.
In the relatively short period between 1974 and 1979, the proportion of university students whose parents were employed in trade or manual work increased from 14% to 19%. Similarly, the level of participation by women in university education experienced a marked increase between 1974 and 1983, increasing from 35.5% to 44.4%.
With the introduction of HECS, Labor began a policy shift that has continued under the Howard Coalition government and is the motivation behind Our Universities — a move to a US user-pays model of higher education.
In the US, students are expected to contribute about 19% of the running costs of public universities. At Canadian universities the rate is 17%. On average, students at Australian universities currently contribute 36.2%. Given that most universities here will implement the full 30% increase in student fees, which the budget proposal allows, that percentage is set to rise to 45-50%.
The neoliberal objection to socialising the cost of higher education is based on the argument that because those with higher education qualifications will generally get higher paying jobs, taxpayers who do not attend universities should not have to subsidise those who do.
Certainly, those with higher education qualifications can generally expect to get a higher wage or salary than those who do not have such qualifications — but they also pay higher taxes.
In its submission to last year's review, NUS pointed out the vast majority of Australians will at some point in their lives access higher education: "If we include TAFE ... Australians now have a lifetime probability of participating in tertiary education at around 90%."
A public education system, if it is really going to merit the name, should be accessible to everyone, regardless of how wealthy or poor they are.
The main fault with the user-pays argument is that it paints the student as the "user" of the improved skills and knowledge that are acquired through higher education. This is only true for those students who go on to become self-employed businesspeople or professionals selling their skills as a service.
Most university graduates, however, have to sell their ability to work (including the improvement in that ability acquired through university training) to a capitalist employer. The real "user" of higher education is the corporation that eventually employs a well-trained university or TAFE graduate and makes profits from their labour.
Of course, public education should really serve the needs of the public — the big majority of whom are working people, not the super-rich owners of corporations. Achieving such a public education system will require a struggle to take place not only around the education system and education policy, but all social institutions to be under the control of working people.
Free education
NUS also pointed out in its submission that instead of charging student fees through HECS or Nelson's new Higher Education Loans Program, a real attempt to increase access to university would begin with fee-less (or free) education.
NUS called for a "progressive taxation reform" model of higher education funding. This model would feature no tuition fees and increased funding for universities through progressive taxation reform — increasing tax rates for high income earners and large corporations. NUS also called for a crackdown on tax minimisation schemes.
In response to Costello's budget speech, Greens senator Kerry Nettle immediately declared that "the Greens stand by our commitment to abolish HECS and a return to free tertiary education. Such a change would cost less than [the] $2.4 billion tax cuts announced tonight."
So what would free education look like? Obviously, the removal of tuition fees is the basic requisite of free education. Rather than charging people full fees because they did not score the right marks, places offered should exceed demand so that everyone who wants to study can.
On top of that, books, readers and other course materials should be freely provided.
Students also deserve to have a decent living allowance. Youth Allowance, Newstart and Abstudy need to be raised from the current appalling levels (below the poverty line) to a level that allows students to reduce their working hours and spend more time on their studies.
University education, and education at all levels, should be accessible to all, regardless of their bank balance. Students shouldn't have to work 35 hours a week on top of the 30 or so hours they are expected to study each week. Parents shouldn't have to start putting money away as soon as a child is born just to make sure she/he can go to university in 20 years' time.
The federal government has launched the biggest attack on higher education in 14 years. Students and staff must meet this by launching a united campaign against the Nelson package and for a return to free, publicly funded higher education.
[Grant Coleman is a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]
From Green Left Weekly, May 28, 2003.
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