BY VIV MILEY
The evidence is mounting that university students are paying too
much for higher education and the federal government spending too little,
with a senior university administrator backing such claims by the union
which represents university staff.
The University of Melbourne's deputy vice-chancellor, Frank Larkins,
told the Australian on March 21 that the ``cost pendulum has swung
too far away from the government and towards the individual''.
In taking a ``balance sheet'' approach to government and individual
contributions and returns, Larkins found that humanities and social science
students repaid government investments twice over, while science and technology
students repaid 1.5 times the government outlays.
Larkins' comments echo claims made in November by the National Tertiary
Education Union. The NTEU, a firm critic of the government's funding cuts
to higher education, issued a statement entitled ``Does HECS deter? Falling
applications suggest that it does'', which cited statistics from the NSW
University Admission Centre showing that undergraduate enrolments for 2000
were down more than 8000 places and that mature age applications had fallen
25% since 1996.
The union argued that changes to the HECS graduate tax were the main
deterrents, in particular those which introduced tiered increases in the
rates for different degrees and which lowered the pay threshold at which
graduates start to pay off their debt.
The prime minister has admitted as much. In a radio interview with Alan
Jones in January, Howard was asked about a ``massive slashing of money''
from government contributions to universities. He responded, ``Universities
have found new ways from the private sector of funding themselves and there
is now a higher private contribution''.
While ignoring the impact of the ``higher private contribution'' on
mature age students and on those from low-income backgrounds, Howard boasted
that students ``get a great reward long term, most of them do out of it,
and I think the system we now have in this country where people do make
a contribution to their education is the best system you can have''.
The NTEU has further backed up its claims in its March 13 federal budget
submission, which cited newly released preliminary data for 2001 enrolments.
“The scale of the package required to restore the viability of an accessible
and quality tertiary education sector far exceeds the commitments made
in Backing Australia's Ability [Howard's innovation policy]”, the
submission notes. In it the union calls for a $2.4 billion a year boost
to higher education funding with the aim of increasing quality and accessibility
and to arrest what it calls a “crisis” in higher education.
The submission says that “the destructive effects of government policy
on higher education” and “the stripping of public resources from universities
by the Howard government” are the major reasons for the current crisis.
The future for the sector is not bright if current policies hold, the
union argues. “The damage that was done to the accessibility and quality
of Australian universities in the first years of the Howard government
was severe”, it says, before warning, “the full ramifications of the changes
to funding and fee structures have not yet been felt”.
The submission outlines four problem areas that need to be addressed
by the government: accessibility, quality, investment in research and investment
in regional development.
“There are three key reforms to HECS which must be implemented”, the
submission states: “increasing the thresholds at which past and present
students must repay their debt; abolition of the differential rates of
HECS; and a reduction in the level of fees paid by students through HECS”.
In light of this the NTEU is recommending the implementation of a fixed
rate of HECS set at $2644, increasing the HECS repayment threshold to the
level of average male earnings, creating 10,000 HECS-exempt scholarships
and restoring the 25,000 HECS-liable postgraduate coursework places that
have been cut since 1996.
The union is also proposing the development of a merit-based scholarship
program and a 1% growth in student load, where growth places are allocated
on the basis of enrolling students from indigenous and low socio-economic
status backgrounds and from rural or isolated regions.
The submission also criticises the federal government for the negative
impact of its policies on indigenous participation in higher education
and calls for Indigenous Support Funding to be restored and for Abstudy
expenditure to be increased to the levels applying prior to its alignment
with the Youth Allowance.
To overcome the disadvantage faced by students from rural and isolated
areas, the submission calls for a Regional Education Development Fund to
be established to provide greater resources to regional universities, TAFE
institutes and cooperative research centres and which would fund projects
aimed at increasing economic development and job creation in regional areas.
In regards to research, the submission acknowledges Backing Australia's
Ability but calls for the proposed increases to the Australian Research
Council (ARC) to be brought forward and for Research Infrastructure Block
grants to be doubled to correspond with the ARC competitive grants.
The union is also calling for an immediate 20% increase in university
funding per EFTSU (Effective Full Time Study Unit), to make up for unfunded
increased costs faced by campuses and for the government to invest further
in developing the skills and knowledge of university staff, especially
in the area of information technology.
The day after the release of the submission from the NTEU, the president
of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, Professor Ian Chubb, told
the National Press Club that, while Backing Australia's Ability
was “a good response”, “unless the decline in funding per student can be
significantly reversed, we will not maximise the benefit from our research
dollars”.
“The learning experience of our students must be improved. Class sizes
and student:staff ratios must come down. Teaching infrastructure must be
updated. Access to opportunity must not be constrained by capacity to pay”,
he warned.
In an election year, all of this pressure for government action will
throw a spanner in the works for both John Howard and Kim Beazley.
Despite both putting forward plans that will supposedly “halt the brain
drain” of scientists, researchers and academics to other countries, both
must now contend with the industry union and vice-chancellors simultaneously
citing lack of government funding as the major problem with the higher
education system.
The union could have gone further still, such as calling for an increase
in Youth Allowance payments, the abolition of HECS altogether and the allocation
of far greater funds for independent research, as some undergraduate and
postgraduate student representative groups have done.
Nevertheless, the NTEU's budget submission will likely become the yard
stick by which the higher education policies of both major parties are
judged. As such, while it essentially calls for a total reversal of the
Coalition's previous education policy, it indirectly and perhaps inadvertently
sticks the boot into the ALP's education platform as well.
For example, Labor has said it will create 10,000 places in an “online
university” and only impose half the rate of HECS on them to boost accessibility.
But this is a far cry from the NTEU's proposal for an extra 10,000 campus-based
HECS-exempt places.
[A copy of the union's submission can be downloaded from the NTEU web
site, <http://www.nteu.org.au/debates/budget/budget2001.pdf>.]
