"We have no intention of deregulating university fees The Government will not be introducing an American-style higher education system. There will be no $100,000 university fees under this Government." John Howard's promise to Parliament in 1999.
Fees are on track to be deregulated by 25 per cent in 2005, after the four independent Senators passed John Howard's higher education package last November. But some domestic undergraduate full fee paying students (DUFFS) are already paying more than $100,000 for their degrees, and fee increases would see Australian students paying more money as a percentage of their public education than students in the United States, the home of user pays higher education .
Since Howard's election in 1996, $5 billion and 20,000 government-funded places have been cut from the higher education system. HECS fees have increased between 33 and 122 per cent. And next year at eleven universities, fees are due to rise as much as 168 per cent above 1996 levels.
In 1997, DUFFS places were introduced for up to 25 per cent of students. For those with the cash to pay up front, University Admission Index (UAI) cut-offs were lowered by five points. This has lead to unfavourable comparisons with the pre-Menzies era of university education, where only the very rich and the very smart were able to study. (See Destroying Menzies' noble revolution.)
So far, the take up of DUFFS places has been relatively restrained, generating just $69 million in 2002. But next year the number of available DUFFS places will rise by 10 per cent if the Liberal Government is reelected, and a new HECS-like loans scheme called FEE-HELP will make it easy for students to acquire a debt of more than $50,000 before they leave their teens.
Since 1998, Austudy payments, for students over 25, have put recipients as much as 39 per cent below the poverty line. Austudy is the only Australian social welfare category that doesn't include Rent Assistance. Youth Allowance payments for younger students are 20 per cent below the poverty line. In 1999, cutbacks to Abstudy saw a 15 per cent drop in Indigenous Australian enrolments for 2000.
Education Minister Brendan Nelson claims recent reforms are "finally placing students at the centre of the university experience" He has certainly tried to place them at the centre of university funding.
In 1987, 85 per cent of funding for higher education came from the federal government. By 2002, government funding had fallen to 44 per cent at a time when the scope of higher education and the demands placed upon it increased dramatically. Between 1985 and 1989 there was a 63 per cent increase in enrolments. Over the last decade more than 300,000 extra students have entered the system. The number of universities has also grown since Labor reforms in the late 1980s saw colleges of advanced education either amalgamated with old universities or re-opened as new ones.
But under a changed and stressed system, the Liberal attitude is that higher education is a privilege, and students shouldn't complain about fee increases. Education minister Dr Brendan Nelson said last September: "A doctor leaving university with a $43,000 debt to the Australian taxpayer and lifetime medical earnings ahead, carries dreams many kids - brickies included, would love to share."
However, the vast majority of students and staff are "not talking about a system where you don't pay for your degree," Sydney University Student Representative Council President Felix Eldridge said, but a funding system which does not deter poorer students from attending university.
"I don't have a problem with people paying HECS, but it must be kept at a very low level such that it can be payed by almost everyone, " Suzanne Jamieson, a senior lecturer in Industrial Relations and fellow of the Senate at Sydney University, said. "The large core funding must come from the federal government and what the students pay is what it's called - a contribution. We are moving towards [students paying for] the cost of the education, and I think it's absolutely wrong."
In its present incarnation, the effectiveness of HECS is questionable at best. If Universities increase HECS fees by 25 per cent across all courses next year, it is estimated that the extra income will be absorbed by the system within three and a half years, leaving universities with no option but to ask the government to ask for more money. If they're asking a Liberal Government, students can expect yet another rise in HECS fees.
HECS looks even more ineffective in the face of a national HECS debt now close to $10 million. Almost 20 per cent of HECS may never paid back because graduates aren't earning enough to make the current $25,348 repayment threshold (to be raised to $35,000 in 2005).
Even Alan Jones sees the stupid side. Last October in a 2GB editorial, he asked: "Wouldn't it be better to send them [students] for free in the first place? What is the point?"
After years of funding cuts which began under the Hawke Government in an increasingly profit driven environment, it's easy to be believe that nothing can or should be done.
University administrators are between a sandstone rock and a hard place over HECS increases. It's the only way to go to cope with less government funding and more students. The University of Sydney vice chancellor Gavin Brown is a self-confessed "unashamed advocate" of full deregulation, and Suzanne Jamieson notes that within university administrations there are some "fairly aggressive businessmen".
"I often wonder to what extent things might have been different in the whole political debate if the universities had not acted as competitors with one another," she says. " If they had acted in a more cooperative sense than they did."
In Facing the Music, the 2001 documentary about Sydney University's music department, associate professor Winsome Evans said of the drastic funding cuts: "I think that too often we give in. We accept the status quo."
Australian students pay some of the highest fees in the world for a quality of education even Nelson admits is poor by international standards. There is no Australian university in the world Top-100. In 1999, the only OECD countries with less public funding for higher education than Australia were Japan, Korea and Luxembourg.
Between 1990 and 2002, student to staff ratios rose from 14.2 per cent to 19 per cent. In my first year at university, students complained that tutorials were packed with 40 students. The department's answer: it changed the name to 'seminars'. Once upon a time, before HECS, a 'tutorial' meant eight students.
In the 1980s, an Arts degree had about 20 hours of face-to-face teaching per week. Today, most full time Arts students have ten to twelve hours a week.
In 1989, during a recession, the Hawke Government introduced a flat HECS fee of $1,800 that didn't rise about levels of inflation until the Liberals got their hands on it in 1996. The ALP now pledges that a Labor Government would "immediately" legislate to reverse next year's increase in HECS payments and abolish all full-fee paying places for undergraduates.
Under its Aim Higher package, Labor would pump an extra $2.34 billion into higher education, the University of New South Wales vice chancellor Kwong Lee Dow doubts that Labor could deliver. Still, it's a step in the right direction.
The National Union of Students president, Jodie Jansen, insists an accessible, affordable and quality higher education need not be a pipe dream. "It's a matter of our priorities and our values."