University staff attack Education Minister Dan Tehan’s fee shake-up

Students and academic staff have greeted angrily the move to hike fees on some university courses while slashing others.

Students and academic staff have greeted angrily the federal government move to raise fees on some university courses, while slashing fees on others, to encourage students into degrees where there is job demand.

The National Union of Students and the National Tertiary Education Union attacked the plan to hike fees for courses such as the humanities and law, while lowering them in STEM courses and education.

“NUS condemns this move, universities are not job-factories and tailoring fees around that premise will hurt our sector in a time where we are already facing billions of dollars lost and hundreds of staff cuts,” NUS national president Molly Willmott said. “We need funding, not attacks on students.”

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Ms Willmott said that while lowering of fees in some degrees was a “positive opportunity” for some students, it came “at the expense of hundreds of thousands of young people who have chosen to study a degree that the government doesn’t deem worthy enough”.

“Being a student should not be a debt sentence, but the government has decided to force tomorrow’s workers into a lifetime of further debt. These degrees are important. The jobs that come out of them are important. These students deserve better from the government.”

NTEU national president Alison Barnes welcomed expanded student places and lower fees in some disciplines, but accused the minister of “a cynical attempt to gouge certain cohorts of students for more money” and shift the burden for properly funding universities.

“Instead he has outlined a plan to massively hike fees for humanities, law and commerce, asking students in those disciplines to bail out the government and do its job for it,” Dr Barnes said.

Recommending he go “back to the drawing board”, she said. “Australian university students already pay some of the highest tuition fees in the developed world. Our university funding is already tilted toward students and away from government. Students are already shouldering too much of the funding burden.

“Dan Tehan has effectively told students studying humanities, law and commerce that they should fund the cost of the pandemic. This is unconscionable.”

However the strategy was applauded by the EY consulting firm’s managing partner, Oceania government and health sciences, Catherine Friday, who said the move was “the strongest signal yet from the government regarding its intent to better connect education and employment using very clear price signals that encourage more students into industries that we know will be important for Australia’s future workforce”.

“As public education delivers both public and private good, there is a strong nudge here towards maximising both, and discouraging ongoing high enrolments in courses like law, where demand for lawyers isn’t growing at anywhere near the pace of the numbers of new law graduates every year.”

Ms Friday encouraged the government to “provide better information to learners and potential learners, by developing transparent and freely available market analysis that shows in real time what skills and education are in demand, where, and at what salary or wage”.

“Putting information into peoples’ hands will better allow them to make their own informed choices about how, where and what to study and learn,” Ms Friday said.