NTEU Welcomes AVCC's Plea to Drop Funding Link to Workplace Relations and Governance Changes
2nd June 2003
The National Tertiary Education Union on Monday welcomed a request by the Australian Vice Chancellors’ Committee to the Federal Government for it to drop plans to link future university funding to radical changes in university governance and workplace relations, including the introduction of individual contracts.
“The NTEU’s position on any Government attempt to tie additional university funding to governance and workplace relations change is clear: it is a recipe for confrontation between staff and management and will create a bureaucratic and administrative nightmare for universities,” said Mr Grahame McCulloch, NTEU General Secretary.
“The Union strongly endorses the AVCC’s plea for the Government to scrap its proposal to make future university funding conditional on governance and workplace relations change.”
“University staff and management are now united on the need for the Government to get real and drop its interventionist industrial and governance agenda for the sector.”
“The main problems facing universities have nothing to do with the need for increased flexibility. The key issues are that staff are increasingly being called on to educate larger numbers of students with fewer resources, are working longer hours and have less job security,” said Mr McCulloch.
“The Federal Government’s industrial agenda for tertiary education, particularly the forced introduction of individual contracts, is an ideological campaign that will do nothing to fix the problems facing universities and improve the quality of the tertiary education received by students,” said Mr McCulloch.
“The NTEU strongly disagrees with a number of aspects of the AVCC’s response to the Federal Government’s reform package, particularly its support for allowing universities to charge students and their families up to 30 per cent more on top of the current Higher Education Contributions Scheme and increasing the number of full fee playing places.”
“Under the present system, students and their families already pay an average of 40 per cent towards the cost of their university education. If universities increase their charges by 30 per cent as the NTEU believes most will end up doing, then the average student contribution will rise to approximately 56 per cent and for some courses, such as law, they will be paying over a hundred per cent of the cost.”
“The Union fears that many students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, will look at the long term debt they will acquire and decide a university education is simply not worth the price,” said Mr McCulloch. “Such a situation is not in the economic or social interest of Australia."
For information and comment:
Mr Grahame McCulloch: 03-9254 1910 or 0418 322 620