Britain rejects Australia's approach to savage student charges
22 July 1997
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) today applauded the responsible approach of the British higher education Committee of Inquiry to university charges. The Dearing Committee recommends that the Blair Government consider plans to introduce a system similar to Australia’s former Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) as it was constituted under the ALP, but has rejected the Coalition’s savage charges and differential HECS rates.
NTEU National President, Dr Carolyn Allport, said today that the NTEU was pleased to see that Britain had learned from the serious mistakes of the Australian Coalition Government in student financing policy. \"We know that the British Committee of Inquiry has been examining our own system in some detail,\" she said. \"But the British have clearly rejected the high-charging, inequitable and unfair approach to student charges embodied in the Coalition’s new policies, introduced this year in Australia.
\"The British proposal would set the HECS-style student charge at a rate equivalent to the ALP’s HECS scheme - 25% of average course costs,\" Dr Allport explained. \"At this level, going by the Australian experience, there would be little if any deterrent effect on students’ participation in university study.
\"However, if charges are raised to between 33% and 60% of actual course costs, as the Coalition has done in Australia, then students turn away from higher education in their thousands. This happened here in 1997. When application rates fell by over 4% nationally, and mature aged students, more likely to be socioeconomically disadvantaged, showed reduced application rates for university of 9%.\"
\"A deferred payment scheme, such as HECS, is far fairer and more sensible than a system of upfront tuition fees,\" Dr Allport said. \"Although higher education unions expressed strong reservations about HECS when Labor introduced it in 1988, it appears that the level struck, and the repayment schedule adopted, were regarded as fair and reasonable by most people.
\"But the Coalition has massively increased HECS charges, however, and has reduced the compulsory repayment threshold from an income set at average weekly earnings to an unreasonably low $20,700 p.a. These changes are clearly unfair and completely unreasonable.
\"Quite rightly, opinion polls show that Australian voters are more dissatisfied with the Coalition’s policy performance in higher education than in any other area,\" Dr Allport said.
\"NTEU has some concerns about the British proposal, namely the optional additional loans to cover living costs which would increase the amount borrowed to levels much higher than those previously applying under Australia’s former HECS. But we are pleased to see that the UK has learned from Australia’s experiences of both success and failure with HECS.
\"The danger, which will always accompany a deferred-payment scheme such as HECS, is that it is a Trojan horse,\" said Dr Allport. \"In other words, policy-makers can use any existing deferred-payment scheme as a vehicle for increases in fees and charges well beyond what was originally intended. Thus a Coalition Government has been able to utilise the HECS mechanism to impose crippling tuition fees on Australian students - something not envisaged by the architects of HECS under Labor.
\"The British would do well to heed the NTEU’s warning on this score,\" she concluded.
Further information:
Carolyn Allport, National President 041 934 9064
Jane Nicholls, National Research Officer 03 9254 1910 (bh)