On Dit’s Guide to D eregulation Serrin Rutledge-Prior Artwork by Mandy Li On Tuesday, March 17, the Senate voted by a margin of 34 to 30 to reject the changes to tertiar y education, as proposed by the Education Minister, Adelaide’s own Christopher Pyne, and the Abbott gover nment. Those who oppose a potentially several-fold increase in university fees can say we dodged a costly bullet. However, those who worr y for the quality of Australia’s tertiar y education system, and who see deregulation of fees as the only way of ensuring we can compete in the global arena, might have preferred to bite the bullet. Though the bill to refor m higher education was defeated, the issue of university deregulation won’t disappear any time soon – certainly not if Pyne’s somewhat macabre pronouncement to Today host Karl Stefanovic is anything to go by: ‘You couldn’t kill me with an axe Karl, I’ll keep coming back.’ 1 So what are the main points to consider in this debate? First order of business: let’s get over the argument that because many of the politicians of today received a free tertiary education (back before 1 To be fair, Pyne wasn’t the only one deserving of derision in that exchange: after pronouncing the education bill to be a “dead duck”, Stefanovic implored Pyne to “let it fly away”, complete with flapping arm motions.
the Hawke Labor Government undid the work of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1989), they are somehow being hypocritical in supporting deregulation. Treasurer Joe Hockey, for example, was, in his student days, fer vently opposed to free education 2 . Such might have been his rage at this extravagant entitlement, that he decided to take a principled stand and pay for his degree. This would be as ridiculous, and quite as useless – if less illegal – than a supporter of free education refusing to pay his university fees today. Living within a certain social, economic or legal system does not automatically entail your support of it, as the members of Socialist Alliance can confir m as they try to sell you a copy of Green Left Weekly 3 . You can do nothing or you can rebel against it, or you can try to work within it in order to change it. The third is what supporters of ‘user-pays’ schemes and deregulation have chosen to do. So let’s move on, shall we? Another belief that has been bandied about is that of the “$100,000 degree”, à la those of our beleaguered American friends. Currently, the Australian government places caps on how much universities can charge students for their courses, as deter mined by which “band” subjects fall into, which is in turn dependent on how much students in particular fields are expected to earn upon entering the workforce. If deregulation passes and those caps are removed, universities will be given free reign to charge as much as they like – within the constraints of the global marketplace. How much is this likely to be? Should we start selling our less vital organs now? A good indicator of post-deregulation costs are probably international student fees. Here at Adelaide, the annual fee for 2 …which is, funnily enough, not the case (see: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ joe-hockey-video-from-1987-shows-treasurer-protestingagainst-university-fees-20140528-394jn.html). Still, should we not all be entitled to a time of youthful folly, of which we can later come to repent when we are Treasurer of the nation? 3 Hey, everyone who lives in a capitalist society needs to pay the bills/Green Left Weekly printing costs, even socialists.
20 An Official Guide to Deregulation