By Alison Dellit
Students and academics around the country will be striking on March 23 to protest against the introduction of up-front fees. The actions were called from the National No Fees Conference in late December, in response to new waves of attacks on students. These include up-front fees for postgraduate students, fees for pre-vocational courses such as legal workshop, increases in fees for TAFE and widespread cuts to more specialist courses.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which covers academics on most campuses, has agreed, after negotiations with the National Union of Students, to call a half-day strike in support of the student action. The strike, while agreed to by the National Executive, will need to be endorsed by the state branches. At the time of writing, NSW and Victoria had agreed to go on strike, while other states were still doubtful.
The theme for the day is No Fees For Degrees, with most states taking up demands to increase education funding, for free education and abolition of HECS.
In the last six months the government has increased its turn to user-pays education, and away from the concept of education as a publicly funded resource. The Options White Paper released by the Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET), the review of postgraduate fees instituted by Simon Crean last year and the proposals for the May budget all seek to justify the government's decision to cut funding to higher education.
These proposals were given more weight with the release of a paper from the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee (AVCC). The paper, supposedly written to "provoke debate", sets out three main proposals to increase funding:
1) Charging "premiums" on top of HECS for more expensive courses such as medicine or law.
How this would work in practice is unclear — whether it would consist of an up-front fee, or an increase through the HECS system with a faster repayment rate.
2) Allowing students to buy their way into university if they fail to win a place.
The government could allow this by relaxing the rules under which universities could charge fees to undergraduates. The idea is that universities could then increase the amount of funding available by taking some full-fee-paying students. It would inevitably result in poorer students competing for places, while richer students would be assured a place.
3) Increasing penalties for students who take longer than the required time to finish their courses. This, again, could be through the HECS system, or imposed as an up-front fee. The existing HECS system already charges by years at university rather than course, so students who are at uni longer pay more; this would mean that they would pay at a higher rate.
Green Left Weekly spoke to Sarah Stephen, general secretary of the ANU Students' Association and a Resistance member on that campus. "These proposals, if adopted by the government, will result in even more inequity for students", she said.
"Already, since the introduction of postgraduate fees last year, the participation of women in these courses has dropped from 51% to 35% — an enormous drop over one year. To increase charges for education is to directly exclude students from disadvantaged backgrounds, women, Aboriginal or Islander students — or anyone else who can't pay."
While the government claims that no studies have indicated that fees or HECS cause greater inequity in access than free education, this is largely because they have commissioned no studies on it. The studies that have been done indicate otherwise. In the first five years after fees were originally abolished, participation by women went from 35% to 55%, and participation by Aboriginal people increased 20 times. Studies have shown most women will be likely to be paying HECS into their 60s.
A recent interview with ANU's vice chancellor, Dean Terrell, quoted him as saying that a premium on courses would be more equitable — because the money could be used to fund more scholarships, and the extra funding would ensure better quality.
Stephen replies, "This is a ridiculous argument. The point is that most students can't afford to pay, not just some. Scholarships will come nowhere near to meeting the demand. The enrolments for legal workshop this year, which is charging fees with a loans scheme in place, is less than half the number of students who said they were intending to do the course before the fees were introduced."
The proposals from the vice chancellors are not new. The same proposals made up part of the Options White Paper put together by the DEET last year. It is from the options discussed in this report that the government will formulate its policy.
The AVCC, while a powerful pressure group, has no power to implement policy; it can only advise the government. The AVCC is simply lending its weight to options the government is already considering.
In past weeks however, the National Union of Students, NUS, has chosen to direct its fire against the AVCC, thereby deflecting criticism from the ALP government. NUS originally abstained from the No Fees campaign last year, offering no support to the occupation and protests at ANU, or any other universities.
Following the No Fees Activist Conference, however, when a national network independent of NUS was set up to run the campaign, NUS decided to devote more resources to intervening. This has resulted in NUS negotiating with NTEU for the strike, and giving some money to rural campuses to run a campaign.
However, student activists are becoming increasingly frustrated by the reluctance of NUS, which is controlled by Labor Students, to criticise the ALP government.
Elena Jeffries, a long-time campaigner against fees in Perth and newly elected member of the NUS education committee, has been particularly vocal in her criticism of NUS. She cites examples of the NUS executive "losing" 12,000 postcards destined for O' Weeks around the country. The postcards were heavily critical of the ALP.
Jeffries also expresses outrage at NUS spending thousands of dollars flying the NUS executive, education and women's committees to Canberra for a week in order try to defeat a disaffiliation campaign at the University of Canberra. "There's no point in trying to impress students with officials if NUS has no support on the ground", Jeffries said. "Until we start getting the policy right, we won't get the support.
"The actions of the National Union of Students in protecting Paul Keating from criticism indicate that there is no guarantee that the NUS will ever stand against the plans of the federal government to increase university fees."
John Graham, president of NUS and a member of the ALP, clarified the NUS official line in a talk on ANU in early March. He stated that the reason up-front fees were being introduced was that Simon Crean was not very interested in his portfolio and hadn't been "paying attention".
When asked about the possibility of the government increasing HECS for some courses, Graham replied, "Oh, they wouldn't do that. They know it's inequitable." Presumably they haven't realised that about up-front postgraduate fees.
Stephen, on the other hand, was unequivocal. "To stop fees — postgraduate or undergraduate — students need to mobilise in opposition to the government's plans. The AVCC report is clearly not in the interests of students, and students do need to come out and attack that paper for being inequitable and elitist.
"But this should not be done in a way that covers for the ALP government. We need to challenge the government's plans through actions like the one on ANU last year, and hopefully through the National Days of Action this year."