In her Mamamia column today, Tanya Plibersek argues that Christopher’s Pynes higher education reforms will only serve to disadvantage students, and Australia’s future.
Lately, there’s been a lot of debate about university fees.
Christopher Pyne thinks universities should be able to charge whatever they like for a degree. He also thinks that students should pay a greater share of the cost of their studies because a uni education is a ‘private benefit’, not a public good.
He’s wrong on pretty much every count.
Australia can never be a successful nation unless we invest in education: from quality early learning and pre-school, through the school years, vocational education, and universities. For many Australians that will mean training and retraining more than once as their lives and our economy change.
Related content: Senate votes down university fees legislation. Again.
It’s estimated that by 2020, two-thirds of all the jobs created in Australia will require a diploma qualification or higher. Encouraging young Australians to go to uni is not just good for them, it’s vital for the wealth of our nation.
And most parents agree. Research by Universities Australia found that 88% of Australians will encourage their children, and young people they know, to attend university.
Mr Pyne asks, ‘Why should a factory worker pay taxes so someone else can get a law degree?’ The answer, of course, is that that factory worker may hope for their children or grandchildren to go to uni. And when those kids graduate, if they earn more because of the degree, they will pay higher taxes, enabling the next generation of kids to get to uni too.
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"What the High Court has now made absolutely clear is the Commonwealth can only provide money for programs over which it has authority under the constitution," he said.
He said the list of federal powers under section 51 of the Constitution "don't include the environment - there is no environment power, there's no general education power and health power".
He said it was possible the first tranche of Green Army projects was unconstitutional but it would require a challenge to prove.
Professor Williams warned the chaplaincy ruling "is going to have an enormous impact in a lot of areas".
"The Commonwealth was of the view for decades that it could spend money on whatever it wanted," he said.
"It used that for a variety of legitimate through to pork-barrelling reasons and moved into areas such as education and the environment, arts - all sorts of things without any visible power to do so. And now the High Court has hauled them back again, and this is a big problem for the Commonwealth."
This piece seems to omit some quite crucial information such as exactly which party it was that reintroduced uni fees. It's not immediately clear why the jump from nothing to $50k (in today's dollars) wouldn't deter students from poor backgrounds while a further rise will. If it stops people from doing useless degrees such as arts (I write as a BA(hons) myself) in favour of taking up a well paid trade then it is probably doing society some good. Society may benefit from more engineers, nurses and teachers, it really doesn't from extra arts graduates.
If you think your degree is useless, I suspect you may have missed the point of a tertiary education.
Why did you spend presumably 3 years and roughly $20 000 studying an Arts degree if you thought it was useless?
It benefited me personally but I'm struggling to see how society is better off than had I say become an equally well paid plumber. I guess if you see middle class white collar jobs as inherently superior to blue collar ones there is a benefit but this is not an argument I subscribe to. As I tend to be unworthily suspicious of 'obvious' arguments that are conveniently unstated, could you list the reasons why society is better off with more arts, communications etc graduates to the extent that they should be subsidised by tens of thousands of dollars?
Perhaps all students who undertake an Arts degree, also believe they have personally benefited from it?