Austin Whitten
The administrative guidelines for the controversial Higher Education Support Act 2003 are currently being digested by university staff across Australia. Administrative personnel travelled to Canberra in March to learn how to implement the new measures.
Opposition to the act, which became law in December 2003, has centered on the increase in the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) fee, largely because the corporate media have shied away from dissecting denser elements in the new law.
Statistics show that Australians are becoming increasingly indebted due to education costs, previously largely covered by the state, now being passed onto students. According to a paper by the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA), by June 30, 2003, Australian students and graduates owed more than $9 billion in HECS to the federal government.
The new legislation, which allows universities to increase HECS fees by 25% above 2003 levels, increase the number of domestic full-fee paying places from 25% to 35%, and introduce a loan scheme with a 20% surcharge on the loan amount, is guaranteed to increase students' level of indebtedness. The debt total is projected to reach $13 billion by 2007.
CAPA notes a number of obvious and not so obvious negatives from a policy which has increased education fees by 20% in 1989 to 40-45% under the new legislation. Students now have to pay up to $140,000 if they want their degree.
CAPA expects that doctors, lawyers, dentists and vets — those in the highest HECS bands — are unlikely to tolerate ever-higher levels of indebtedness without passing it on to their clients.
CAPA also addresses the psychological effects of going into debt, and quotes a 2003 Briish study, "Attitudes to Debt", that found students with tolerant attitudes toward debt were more likely to go to university while debt-averse students are more likely to stay away.
Conversations with university graduates labouring to pay off loans also illustrates the conservative, "shackled" mentality that indebtedness leads to. Students are the country's new indentured workers.
The new legislation has other negative features. University personnel are conducting extensive workshops for administrators who will be responsible for interpreting and implementing the new act, as well as writing specifications for university computer systems to handle the labyrinthine decision-making required. The government admits that the new act represents the most extensive change in the higher education legislation since the initiation of the HECS scheme.
Still to come are the expenses incurred for re-programming computers and testing the new software. Complexities in the legislation, written to snake around objections and to win over independent MPs in the Senate, are guaranteed to create an expensive administrative nightmare.
It was acknowledged in campus training sessions — which required a 130-page reference guide and a 100-page workbook — that students would need the equivalent of a tax consultant just to understand what they should be paying, let alone choosing the most advantageous options.
Word problems contained in the workbook illustrate the complexities of the fee increases. Students are "grandfathered", that is they stay under the fee structure they were at when they started their course, with many qualifications applying.
One word problem required calculating the fee for three students taking the same units at the same university. One student began their studies in 1996, the second in 2004 and the third will begin in 2005. They would pay, respectively $2895, $5469 and $6837, doubling the fee in nine years.
In addition to raising fees, HESA establishes a number of new "caps" and tightens the screws on existing ones by choking off social supports and benefits. Each cap has the appearance of fairness if you accept the validity of capping basic services such as education, medical care, housing and food in the first place. Once the cap has been established, it is tightened over subsequent years as the public becomes inured to the last turn of the screw. In the end, the social support limb is designed to wither and die.
To give an example of this screw tightening: New Zealand citizens and post-graduate students with permanent residency in Australia who start a new university course in 2005 will no longer be eligible for student loans. Then there is the establishment of a new screw. The amount of time a student may take to complete a university course of study, depending on the course, is capped using a new concept — Student Learning Entitlement. After a student's SLE runs out, they must pay full fees.
A host of rules and regulations govern SLEs. They concern changes in courses, interrupted study, work experience in industry and overseas study, and guaranteeing ongoing employment for university bean-counters and bureaucrats.
Creating caps, limits and liabilities inevitably results in administrative complexity and overhead. Anyone with experience in the US medical system would be aware of this fact. The Canadian universal public health care system has 60% less administrative overhead than the US private insurance system. A one-page document serves as an application for hospital, nursing home or home-care facilities in Canada, compared to the briefcase of papers required to gain access to any one of these services in the US.
A fistful of new forms will be required to implement the new education act, as well as a new controversial tracking system for students that requires anyone using it to have a Commonwealth Higher Education Student Support Number (CHESSN). Student information will be routinely passed to the government through CHESSN. Initially, it will consist of birth date, gender and enrolment data to allow the government to calculate an individual's SLE, and to know when to cut them off from HECS or loan eligibility.
The government is also now asking universities to request tax file numbers for students in the HECS and loan programs. The new goalpost being set for breach of privacy was discussed. Students will have no option but to consent to these new procedures otherwise the government will cut them off.
This is not the end of the process however. The government's agenda and goals are obvious and will continue unabated until it is dumped at the elections. But even then, public pressure on a new regime will be necessary to reverse what is being put in place now. The sooner we start building this pressure the better.
[Austin Whitten is a member of Socialist Alliance.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 4, 2004.
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