University Fees A Challenge To Australia's Egalitarianism

The Age

Monday January 16, 2006

Poor students less likely to pursue higher education due to hefty HECS debts.

TONIGHT, nearly 55,000 Victorian students will discover if they have been accepted into the university course of their first preference. The proportion celebrating good news is likely to be higher this year as demand for university places drops. The Age last week reported that demand for government-funded university places had fallen for the second year in a row as the increasing cost of higher education cut deeper. Figures from the Victorian Tertiary Admission Centre showed the number of first-preference applications for HECS or government places dropped by 2.5 per cent to 54,872. This followed a 4 per cent decline in 2005. These falls are cause for concern as it appears the broadly accessible system of tertiary education available to Australians since the Whitlam government reforms is under threat.

Commentators have pointed to two possible reasons for the decline in applications. One is a strong economy that lures students into the workforce rather than to university. The other, more concerning, reason is the increasing cost of higher education, which is disadvantaging students from poor socio-economic backgrounds and creating a two-tier university sector. Commonwealth funding for universities has been declining for the past decade. For example, Melbourne University receives only 23 per cent of its income from the Federal Government. To compensate and to create competition, the Howard Government for the first time last year allowed universities to increase HECS fees by 25 per cent, and most have done that. They were also given the option of offering up to 35 per cent of places in any course to local full-fee paying students. The concern is that higher course fees can deter students from poor backgrounds who are worried about accruing huge debts before they even have their first full-time job. Universities now can charge up to $8170 a year for prestige courses such as medicine, dentistry and law, and full-fee courses are many times this. Despite the HECS deferred-loan scheme, poorer students are less likely to take on this debt than students from wealthy backgrounds, who may have the family support needed to cover these and other living costs. Higher fees could also shut out rural and mature-age students. This leads to a tertiary system where equality of access is further compromised and not everyone who is eligible for a university place goes on to tertiary study.

Another outcome of increased fees is the creation of a two-tier university system, where the prestige universities such as Melbourne and Monash flourish at the expense of less-prominent metropolitan and regional universities. This is because the higher profile institutions are more able to attract the lucrative students from overseas, as well as domestic students who seek out the higher status campuses. This is borne out by figures obtained by The Age last week that showed Melbourne had a 4.9 per cent increase in first-preference applications, Monash a 2.8 per cent rise and Deakin a 5.2 per cent jump. Meanwhile, Ballarat University had a 14.6 per cent drop in applications, and Victoria University an 11.8 per cent decrease. This hampers Australia's ability to develop a higher education sector that is diverse and of high quality. It also threatens the development of regional and rural economies.

Australia wants to be known as the clever country. However, we cannot remain competitive unless we have a sophisticated, well-educated workforce. The Howard Government has been encouraging school leavers also to consider a trade or TAFE education as an alternative to a university education, but that sector is no better funded. The federal and state governments say they are committed to providing quality education - it is time for them to match the rhetoric with a substantial funding boost. By relying increasingly on a user-pays system, Australia risks going down the path of the United States, where quality education - some of it very high quality - is only available to the rich. That is not in the best interests of Australia, which ought to uphold its egalitarian ideal of ensuring good education is available to all.

© 2006 The Age

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