Debt By Degree

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday December 6, 2003

Linda Doherty

In the massive university shake-up one thing is sure students will pay more. Linda Doherty reports.

It is a year from today and year 12 students are anxiously awaiting their exam results and the magic rank that gains them entry to university in 2005. They will be the first students to experience the new university landscape, guinea pigs in the biggest shake-up of higher education in 15 years.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, four independent senators voted to pass a heavily amended $2.4 billion reform package developed by the Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, over the past two years.

Out went the Government's radical attempt to bring in contracts for university lecturers but in came the capacity for Australia's 38 publicly funded universities to raise fees by up to 25 per cent.

``It will deliver much needed reform, freeing universities to grow in areas of expertise, reducing class sizes and finally placing the student at the centre of the university experience," Nelson said yesterday.

In the brave new world of academia, universities will be the marketplace and students their clients.

The class of 2005 will pay more to go to university about $14,000 for an arts degree and up to $50,000 to train as a doctor but once in the workforce, they can earn $36,000 before they start repaying the debt.

More than a third of students could potentially be full-fee-paying students, admitted to university on lower marks. These students will be paying through the nose perhaps $100,000 to get a degree but will have access to a new loan scheme.

Students will shop around for a degree. Price as well as prestige will determine choice of study. Courses that are expensive to run or have low student demand will disappear and some institutions are expected to amalgamate, even close.

Renata Kaldor , deputy chancellor at the University of Sydney, dismisses much of the gloom around the reform debate.

She was relieved that the threshold at which the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) must be paid back has been lifted from $24,365 to $36,184 and that there are more scholarships for disadvantaged, bright students.

``We thought that if the university degree doesn't give you the average weekly wage, then you shouldn't be paying back your HECS," she said.

She predicts students will be more demanding and will want better facilities and smaller tutorials ``to get more for their buck".

Increased competition will force universities into niche areas to attract students and much-needed research dollars. The well-resourced ``sandstone" universities like Sydney which will lift fees from 2005 will be aggressively hunting the best students. ``It's going to be a shake-up, because each university will have to determine where its strengths and weaknesses lie and not every university will be a generalist university," Kaldor said.

But to the grandfather of university policy, Professor Peter Karmel , the reforms leave a lot of ``unfinished business" where the government role ``remains quite interventionist".

Karmel, a former vice-chancellor of the Australian National University and chairman of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission, said the money $2.4 billion over five years isn't all that generous when it has to cover academic pay rises and reverse the decline in university staff-to-student ratios.

Since the Howard Government's election in 1996, this ratio has worsened from one lecturer to 15 students to one for every 20 students.

``The reforms aren't all that major. They are tinkering at the edges," Karmel said.

© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald

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