The Liberal party didn’t do a lot of talking about their higher education policy before the last election. In the wake of their university fee deregulation plans now defeated in the Senate not once, but twice, and the Group of Eight universities abandoning support for the bill, the time is right for a vibrant and necessary discussion about education that may yet be the most positive outcome of this “uncertain” time.
The government is apparently preparing a third Senate assault for their deregulation model, which allows universities to set their own student fees. While Christopher Pyne has insisted that institutions will compete to offer the best deals, simultaneous funding cuts suggest that to maintain current standards, universities will milk students for the shortfall.
Labor has made much political capital with their loud opposition to the proposed increases; the notion of $100,000 degrees and “American-style” tuition models are incredibly unpopular with the electorate. No surprises here: the changing demands of the economy have encouraged more students into universities than at any time in Australian history. In the period between 2009 and 2013, the student population here increased by 27%. Writing for Guardian Australia, Bill Shorten made the point that:
By 2020, two out of every three jobs created in Australia will require a diploma or higher.
It’s this admission that exposes mythologies within Labor’s own current higher education policy, specifically that of the Hecs system introduced by Labor in 1989. Back then, Labor sold Hecs to the electorate as a redress of “middle-class welfare”; the argument went that the taxes of blue-collar workers shouldn’t be subsidising the professional training of an incipient managerial class. But rather than tax the industries that were demanding a bigger managerial workforce, Labor dovetailed old class resentments into modern neoliberal rhetoric and decided that education was a commodity consumed by individuals. It priced it to them accordingly. While Labor currently posits itself as the saviour of “accessible” education, it must be acknowledged that it is their Hecs scheme that serves as the template for Pyne’s present policy.
Never acknowledged by the defenders of Hecs is that it is a system of unfair taxation. For all the old rhetoric about “middle-class welfare” and personal advantage, Hecs is imposed without means-testing: those on lower paid jobs accrue a higher percentage of debt to income than the wealthy who hold the exact same qualification. Stalling the repayment of the debt until graduates reach an income threshold just means that those on smaller incomes bear the same debt burden for a longer time. Not only does this disproportionately punish those who use their qualifications for lower-paying jobs serving the community rather than higher-paid ones in the corporate sector, but it also further compounds disadvantage of women already earning less than identically-trained male colleagues due to the gender paygap.
And yet Labor have been vocal in their criticism of debt burdens. They’ve also acknowledged the fact that poorer communities are more financially risk-averse and therefore more unlikely to take up university places attached to debt. They should know this argument well; the same criticism was applied to Hecs in 1989. If Labor is serious about the equitable and accessible education system they talk about, the onus is to provide a discernible alternative to what presently amounts only to a disagreement on pricing.
Shorten is willing to admit that it’s the job creators who are demanding graduates. He should be brave enough himself to demand that it’s these employers who should be absorbing the costs of education. If there’s “middle-class welfare” going on in this country, it’s unfairly demanded from students to subsidise what amounts to free training for corporations. An equitable education system would shift the Hecs mechanism to employers, paid by them per employee and administered by the tax office.
As a country where tax avoidance by our wealthiest individuals and corporations is costing us $8.4bn a year, businesses picking up the Hecs debts of employees is not only affordable but a just means of paying back a social and economic debt. Those still arguing that individuals who profit from their education should pay for it should be encouraging an end to the tax-cut culture and the maintenance of a progressive taxation system that takes the most from those who can most afford it to fund the things that the whole nation needs.
If it was time for free education under Gough Whitlam, the combination of industry pressure for graduates and the rejection of Pyne-style deregulation suggests it’s time to talk about a better and fairer restructuring of our system again now.
It’s not enough to have just Jacqui Lambie and the Greens defending free education as a plank of Australian egalitarianism. While Labor persists in defending the false premise of tuition fees and the unjust mechanism of the Hecs system, the inequity will continue and the threat of American-style deregulation will not go away.