Funding cuts will hurt students, universities warn

UNIVERSITIES Australia will today warn of a Dickensian future for students staggering under the weight of higher education funding cuts.

UNIVERSITIES Australia will today warn of a Dickensian future for students staggering under the weight of $3 billion in higher education funding cuts.

UA chair Sandra Harding will tell the National Press Club that students are already doing it tough before the cuts, and cite a soon-to-be released survey of student finances that shows that over 80 per cent of full-time undergraduates need jobs to support themselves.

Students worked 16 hours a week on average during semester, with one in three saying their jobs frequently clashed with classes and one in six that they regularly went without food or other necessities.

Last month's $2.3bn funding cuts undermine the government's commitments on funding per student place, Professor Harding says, with the $900 million "efficiency dividend" pruning the commonwealth grants scheme and other teaching and learning areas. Another $1bn cut during last October's mid-year budget directly affected students, with start-up scholarships frozen until 2017 and income support delayed for masters students.

The choice between post-school jobs and the long-term reward of university study "has been tilted towards the short-term gain", Professor Harding says in her speech.

The "very groups the government has targeted in its education revolution", families with no history of university education, would be particularly averse to HECS debt.

The speech warns of fewer students - particularly from disadvantaged, regional and indigenous backgrounds - as well as bigger classes, more untenured teachers and greater drop-out rates.

Fewer international enrolments, less innovation and emigrating researchers will have "knock-on effects on prosperity, international competitiveness and quality of life".

"Funding cuts can't take us where we need to go," she says.

UA estimates the dividend and student support cuts will cost $1bn a year by 2017. "These are cuts that keep on taking," Professor Harding says.