Hi guys, just wondering if anyone here could give me some quick feedback on my oral presentation. Whether you give me little or alot of feedback, all is very much appreciated!
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When the then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam abolished university fees in 1974, it ushered in a new age for tertiary education in this country. For the first time, the children of factory workers, farmers and tradesmen could realistically dream of going to university. Aspiring students, like people in my family, were no longer limited by their socio-economic status and were able to study the course of their dreams without the weight of financial hardship bearing down on their shoulders.
Now in 2014, the Abbott government has proposed legislation that would deregulate universities, allowing them to set their own prices for courses. This would see high demand courses such as engineering, law and medicine explode in price to astronomical figures of over $100,000.
Thankfully, the Australian senate has so far rejected this legislation, namely due to the efforts of Labor, The Greens and minor parties. However, Education Minister Christopher Pyne says he will “never give up” on these reforms, which means that campaigning still must be done against these radical changes to our education system. I believe that university prices should remain regulated to ensure that every student has an equal opportunity to further their education, regardless of their socio-economic background.
A regulated system is not only good for students; it’s good for the country. According to an OECD report from last year, every dollar invested in higher education leads to a public return of $6. The more students we have in education, the more we invest and hence the more money we, as a society, are left with.
For a country supposedly in the midst of a “debt and deficit disaster”, why is the government pushing for reforms that would actively lower the amount of money that they can use to fix the budget? It does not make any fiscal sense whatsoever to invest less in education and have less students going to university. Quite simply, the economic illiteracy of this policy is astounding and Australia will be financially worse off because of it.
University deregulation would also encourage students to switch from socially beneficial degrees to high money earning courses such as commerce and law. With cuts to youth welfare, low home ownership rates and general pessimism towards their career outlooks, could you blame young people for following the money? If we were to deregulate universities, socially good and valuable professions would simply not be viable for young people because of the harsh economic climate they face.
Do we really want more bankers and lawyers and fewer teachers, nurses and scientists? Do we want less of the people who make valuable social and technological contributions to this country? If course prices were to increase, then students would be basing their career choices on not want they want pursue, but rather how much they can afford to pay. There is no way that such an outcome is would be considered “good” for society.
We only have to look overseas to see the impacts of fee hikes. In 2012, England tripled the cap of their university fees to £9000 or $17500 Australian. According to Times Higher Education, England experienced a staggering drop of almost 20% in university enrollments the following year as a direct result of these fee increases. When you compare their relatively paltry fees to the potential $100,000 degrees we are facing here, I shudder to think how many aspirational young minds will avoid university simply because they can’t afford to go.
Ultimately, the biggest objection that I, and many others, have to these reforms is that they are fundamentally unfair. If these changes were to go ahead, course prices would balloon out to extraordinary figures, making them unattainable to most students. Is this really the system we want? A system where only those born into affluence can ever dream of going to university, while those born into working-class backgrounds have no chance whatsoever of furthering their education.
These measures strike at the heart of the egalitarian nature of our society.
As Australians, we are constantly taught the value of a “fair go”. Well, how is a university system steeped in financial inequality in any way “fair”? As Mr. Whitlam said in an election campaign speech, it should be a student’s merit, rather than their parent’s wealth, that determines who gets to go to university.
Many people in this country, including those in government who support this legislation, owe their tertiary educations to Whitlam’s reforms, and his legacy of no upfront fees continues to this day. If not for his reforms thousands of aspiring young Australians, including people in my family, would never have gone to university and contributed to this countries success. We should be fostering the dreams and ambitions of our youth, because ultimately, what’s good for students is good for Australia.
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