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WORONI 15 Life & Style
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13 MAY 2 0 1 4 - NO. 7, VOL 66 - WORONI.COM.AU - T: @WORONI - F: WORONI
ANU NEWS Areti Metuamate Woroni elections Nominations for Woroni closed last week with 9 be found in this paper and online. Voting will take place during the week of May 26 – 30 and every ANU student will receive an email with links available to the online poll and with information on each of the candidates. PARSA elections ANU’s Postgraduate and Research Students’ Association is about to hold elections for new council members. The PARSA Council has 29 members, two from each college and 15 general reps. is to be held on 30 April. Current PARSA President, Arjuna Mohottala, is going to be standing again but with heavy competition as his popular Ben Niles, have also indicated they will be running for the position. Photo by Ross Caldwell
That incessant show-off, the UC, made it clear to Canberra that NOT ONLY does it own its own Football team, but it also gets all the bands. Here at the ANU we have to settle for Nobel Prize winners.Anyway, Woroni took some sweet pics, check them out on the Back Page and our Facebook page.
Libs Put Students on a Budget Fergus Hunter THE Abbott government is poised to unveil sweeping changes to higher education in today’s budget. Education minister Christopher Pyne has been doing the rounds in recent weeks, reportedly preparing for the deregulation of university fees and the extension of government funding to private colleges and TAFEs. “We want to set up our universities so they can compete,” Mr Pyne has been telling anyone who will listen. “We want to unshackle them so they can The extension of Commonwealth supported places to “teaching only” colleges and TAFEs aims to increase innovation and competition in the sector. Colleges have welcomed the idea and Mr Pyne has strongly indicated the government’s intention to implement it, despite the hesitance of some in the higher education sector. Fee deregulation is the more controversial of the two. Critics argue that it will damage equity and access, with the size of the debt for expensive degrees putting off people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. However, some analysis has suggested that - under the HECS-
HELP system - higher fees don’t discourage poorer students from going to university. Any changes in this area will come after strong voices outside the government have made their preferences clear. The Group of Eight, chaired by the ANU’s own Professor Ian Young, support deregulation as a way of increasing funding and quality. The government’s Commission of Audit recommended a 12-month investigation into deregulation options before implementing anything. The report also suggested that students pay a greater share of their fees (up from 41 to 55%, reducing the government’s contribution) and lowering the income threshold for HECS-HELP repayment from its current level of $51,000 to the minimum wage ($32,000). In a recent opinion piece published in The Australian, Professor Young and Chancellor Gareth Evans said that if Australian universities want to compete internationally, they need a funding model that encourages diversity and not “perverse incentives”. Young, Evans and others advocating for deregulation have said that it is a recognition of a harsh economic reality: while governments should be increasing funding to the sector, this isn’t going to happen so the money has to come from somewhere. They also suggested equity scholarships would be an important part of protecting diversity.
The issue has divided vice-chancellors across the country, however, with some favouring more cautious deregulation and others completely oplation have also stressed that it shouldn’t come at the expense of existing government funding. Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon slammed deregulation as “code for jacking up fees at Australia’s highest ranked universities - and creating a more unequal, elitist education system.” The National Union of Students says that “students already graduate with almost a decade’s worth of debt to repay, and deregulating fees would only increase that debt burden.” Commentators have offered that full deregulation of university fees is unlikely, as it would result in an explosion of HECS debt and bring us very close the situation in the United States - where total student loan debt stands at $1 trillion . Professors Young and Evans proposed capping fees at the same level as international students’. Whatever happens, university students
New Chair for ANU Union a number of services and food outlets within the Union building and around the ANU campus, has a new Chair. Joshua Orchard, a member of the Labour party and lead candidate at the last Union elections has taken up the role. ANU Registrar off to UniSA ANU’s Registrar of Student Life, Dr Laura-Anne Bull (listed as No.13 on the 2014 ANU Power List) is leaving to take on a new role at the University of South Australia as Pro Vice-Chancellor (Student Engagement and Equity). Not long into her newly created portfolio, which now includes all the ANU halls of residence, Dr Bull has surprised many with the announcement made last week via email to staff. ANU has launched a MOOC (Massive Open Onbilingually in English and Hindi. The Engaging India course has well over 10’000 enrollments and is available free to anyone who can access the internet. A number of ANU students and staff, including the DVC Marnie Hughes-Warrington, have enrolled in the 10 week course.
AIME Launched at ANU The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) program, aimed at increasing the number tralia, was launched at ANU recently. AIME’s goal is to engage students and support Year 12 budget of the Abbott Coalition government. student in particular to transition from school to Woroni is inside the budget lock-up today - look further education, training or employment. out for our coverage of the government’s higher education measures.