University Staff Back Student National Day of Action
March 31 2004
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) strongly backs today’s student National Day of Action in protest against the move by nearly a quarter of Australia’s public universities to increase their HECS charges, and the prospect that many more institutions will follow.
“Student contributions to the cost of their degrees have consistently increased under the Howard Government, from an average of 20% in 1996 to about 40% currently, as a result of changes to HECS in 1997,” said Dr Carolyn Allport, NTEU President.
“The introduction of the new system in 2005 will automatically increase this to approximately 44%, and the situation will become even worse as more institutions elect to charge the maximum 25% increase, as they are allowed to do under the Government’s changes to higher education passed by the Senate last year.”
“International comparisons show that the fees paid by students at public universities are currently exceeded only by Korea and Hong Kong,” said Dr Allport. “With an increase of up to 25% in fees, our students could be paying the equivalent of the highest fees in the world to attend a public university.”
“The NTEU strongly believes this is one area in which being a world leader is not in Australia’s best interests. It will result in a significant increase in student debt and have major implications for the affordability and access to a university degree by students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
Ten universities have so far announced that they intend to increase their HECS fees in 2005, all but one of them by the full 25%, and many more appear set to follow their lead over the following months.”
“This situation could have been avoided if the Government and the leadership of the Australian Vice Chancellor’s Committee had dealt with the most significant funding problem facing universities, that is the inadequate arrangements for indexing university operating grants.”
“NTEU estimates that since 1995, indexation has failed to keep up with salary and non-salary costs, which have increased by an average of 4-5% per annum.
“The NTEU has consistently maintained that given the financial strain that the higher education sector is under, giving universities the choice to increase their fees in the absence of attempts to improve indexation is tantamount to giving them no choice at all.”
For information and comment:
Andrew Nette, NTEU Policy and Research Coordinator