Jeffrey Wilson, Sydney
Political economy students at Sydney University are organising against discriminatory policies in the economic and business faculty that under-fund departments teaching primarily HECS students (who repay their university fees to the government once they are employed).
The political economy department teaches non-orthodox approaches to economic theory, and attempts to study the links between economic and other social processes. It was established in the early 1970s as a result of a long-fought campaign by students and staff for an economics syllabus that moved beyond the socially blind, mathematical focus of the economics establishment.
However, its existence has come under threat from Professor Peter Wolnizer, dean of the economics and business faculty. On May 12, Wolnizer announced a "strategic restructure" of the faculty, with the goal of shifting its educational emphasis further toward the business and management courses that attract most of its fee-paying revenues, and which make it Sydney University's most profitable faculty.
It is proposed that departments will receive funding on the basis of "student load and profile". "Profile" is an insidious euphemism for whether a department's students are primarily fee-paying or HECS students. The proposed funding system will allocate the most funds to departments (such as accounting and finance) that have high levels of fee-paying enrolments.
Furthermore, departments that run "budget deficits" are to be threatened with closure if they cannot balance their bottom-line.
When taken with the perverse fact that it costs more to educate a student than the government provides in HECS funding, the proposed system will put the political economy department, whose enrolment is almost exclusively HECS students, in a situation where it runs chronic budget deficits regardless of how many students enrol. Political economy is thus at serious risk of being cut in 2007.
Students have begun to organise against the "restructure" proposal. Petitions have been put to various academic boards calling on Wolnizer and the university senate to overturn any system that discriminates against courses simply because they attract large numbers of HECS students.
For further information, email the Political Economy Students' Society (ECOPSOC) at <ecopsoc@yahoogroups.com>.
From Green Left Weekly, June 7, 2006.
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