By Alex Bainbridge
When the Whitlam government abolished tertiary fees and introduced an elementary income support scheme (Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme — TEAS), higher education became an option for broader sections of our society. Now it is a Labor government that is in the middle of removing the option of a decent education for all.
In the August budget of 1986, the Hawke government introduced a $250 "administration fee". At the time, the student movement argued that this was the initial stage towards full up-front fees for all students.
Since then, the government has introduced the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), which requires students to pay a tax for their education after they have finished their course and their income has reached a certain level — another setback for the idea that there should be a social responsibility for the socially useful task of education.
Now, the proposition that full up-front fees are around the corner does not seem at all unrealistic. Most overseas students are forced to pay fees, as are many post graduate students. These fees can be in the tens of thousands of dollars — $33,000 for some courses at the University of Melbourne — and most are over $6000 a year.
At the same time, we are hearing proposals from different sections of the education bureaucracy and other right-wing forces that will severely limit access to education and continue privatising and deregulating education. The January 1992 draft options report on AUSTUDY by Bruce Chapman (of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, ANU) proposes that AUSTUDY be replaced by a loans scheme after the first or second year of study.
The March 1991 report of the Vice-Chancellors' Committee includes proposals that undergraduate students should pay fees to get into uni if they are not accepted on their academic merits.
More and more we are hearing proposals for admittance exams into individual institution and calls for greater "independence" and "freedom" for individual universities (read deregulation, privatisation, the "right" of universities to charge fees and the "right" of universities to set their own entrance criteria). David Pennington, vice-chancellor at Melbourne University and president of the Vice-Chancellors' Association, has received a lot of media attention in Victoria for his public support for these proposals.
The Liberal Party advocates entry to uni through a voucher system: a prospective student, instead of being offered a "place" in a tertiary institution, would be given a "voucher" to be exchanged with the institution accepting that person into study and which would entitle the institution to a certain amount of funding.
This system would give total freedom to any university to accept other students on the basis of full fees and would leave open the possibility that vouchers would be funded at less than the cost of providing that course. This would either drive down the quality of itutions to cover the cost of providing places by full or part fees on some or all students. It would also facilitate creating distinctions between different universities, and between the TAFE sector, with some campuses developing reputations of being "better" and being able to attract students paying large fees.
The federal government is restricting the growth of higher education at a time when demand for it is growing, and trying to soak up demand by increasing places in TAFE. This year, an unprecedented number of applicants were not offered places in higher education, an estimated 50,000-60,000 people Australia-wide. This is due to a decrease in intake (20% in Victoria) at a time of high demand.
The excuse for the decreased intake is the overcrowding experienced last year. Academic staff union estimated that over-enrolling was around 10% and up to 13% at some campuses. The effect was a severe strain on resources like libraries, photocopiers and cafeterias, increased charges for lecture notes and overcrowding of lecture theatres, with many courses reporting that students had to sit on stairs or not fit into halls. The over-enrolling can mainly be attributed to federal funding arrangements which penalised institutions for under-enrolling (coupled with the fact that increasing numbers of people were accepting places because of rising unemployment levels) and government pressure to increase the number of places without increasing funding.
In 1983, when the Hawke government was elected, funding per full-time tertiary student was $9870. In 1990, this figure had dropped to $8858 — a decrease of over 10% even without allowing for inflation.
The federal government has funded 600 extra places this year — a "steady increase" boasted federal education minister Peter Baldwin — to meet the demand of tens of thousands of qualified school leavers who can't get into uni.)
The government is trying to encourage more people to enter TAFE courses and has provided an extra 11,000 places this year. (Last year, 30,000 people were turned away from TAFE even though enrolments increased — by as much as 20% in NSW.) Federal government pledges of extra funds to provide 50,000 more places in TAFE nationally this year still leaves an estimated shortage of 135,000 places.
The government's greater willingness to fund TAFE is due to the fact that TAFE is currently funded at about half the level of higher education and that most TAFE courses are already subject to fees. Students are currently paying an administrative charge of $140 a year for most courses and $460 a year for diploma or associate diploma courses, on top of buying books and materials. The lower level of funding for TAFE is a concrete example of the steps towards different "classes" of education.
Also, most TAFE courses are directly related to careers and are defined by the needs of big business. This is increasingly the case with higher education as well. Currently around half of all higher education courses are vocational. Engineering, science and computer courses have increasing numbers of places while most arts g against funding cutbacks at a time when there is increased demand for these courses.
Fee paying overseas students have become a multimillion dollar export industry, and many universities are increasingly tailoring courses to meet this demand. The same is happening to postgraduate courses. Courses that charge fees are proliferating even though, theoretically, courses should be designed so that postgraduate students coming out of undergraduate studies should not have to pay fees.
The government is also finding other ways of cutting back on areas that affect students. One area is AUSTUDY. When TEAS was first introduced as income support for tertiary students in the '70s, around two-thirds of students were eligible for assistance. Now AUSTUDY is granted to less than one-third of students, and many of these students do not receive the full rate.
The independent rate of AUSTUDY is less than 70% of the poverty line. Many students are not even eligible for that. To be eligible for the independent rate, a student has to be over 25 years old unless they are made eligible for some other reason, such as having a child. This drives many students to get married so that they can get AUSTUDY at all.
While a student may have been living away from home for years, she or he is only given the away from home rate, which is still means tested on the parents' income. Suggestions that AUSTUDY should be turned into a loan are adding insult to injury. This could have some students leaving university with a debt of tens of thousands of dollars.
Those people who will be entering (or trying to enter) tertiary education in the next few years are therefore not guaranteed that they will be able to gain access if the push towards deregulation and privatisation continues. This is already putting pressure on high school students and secondary schools.
The number of students staying on at school has been increasing, in the same way that the number of people applying for tertiary education has been increasing. A large part of this is due to the poor chances of getting a job without having finished school. This year, there is the added pressure of many school leavers wanting to return to school after not having been given a place at a university or TAFE.
Secondary education has been suffering some of the same cutbacks as tertiary education. According to Diane Foggo, Australian Teachers Union president, secondary student numbers have increased by 20,000 in the past three years while more than 5000 teaching jobs have been cut.
Many schools in Victoria were announcing that they were already full or close to full when it was announced that so many people did not get into university.
What's more, the "census date", on which secondary schools in Victoria are expected to give precise figures about their number of students, was February 4. Places for tertiary study were announced on February 5. The results of the "census" determine funding and staffing levels.
Many schools were already stretching resources (including classrooms) to meet the numbers of people staying on as a result high unemployment. The response to these resource problems has mainly been in the framework of economic "rationalism": on February 6, the istry proposed amalgamating 34 high schools, technical colleges and secondary colleges.
In the last two years, schools have been implementing the new Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) to replace the old High School Certificate. While progressives have always had criticisms of the VCE, it did incorporate positive aspects, including greater choice for students and a reduction of the exam component of assessment. But even before the VCE was launched, many of the most radical aspects were removed, and since it has been implemented, most of the rest have gone.
Students are also experiencing increasing costs which can make it quite expensive to attend high school. These include school uniforms, "voluntary amenities fees" and increased charges for equipment. This all begins to make the idea that we have a system of free secondary education look a bit suspect too.
Neither secondary nor tertiary education is a priority of our governments. Both need a massive injection of public funding to both make up for the cutbacks of the last 10 years and to make the improvements that are necessary. Both also need students and teachers to be given real control over developments.