The Coalition government back in June announced that an overhaul of university fees would take place. The proposed changes to fees were to increase Law and Commerce degrees by 28% and the Humanities by 113% whilst at the same time, giving marginal decreases to others when all summed up is an 18% increase.
Mr Tehan attempted to justify the policy decisions by telling the ABC: “We want to incentivise students to undertake courses that will give them the skills to take the jobs of the future.”
This is a genuine and legitimate concern but another failure in judgement from this government. Instead of slapping future universities students in the face, a system that incentivises completing STEM degrees in comparison to arts and law is preferable than the alternative of punishing those who don’t go with STEM.
There are many issues with the Minister’s reasoning behind the changes. It firstly has to be mentioned that this will largely just be punishing people who decide to take law, commerce and humanity subjects as not many people are going to completely change careers over a fee increase. What Year 12 student who is thinking about pursuing a career in law will suddenly change over to an IT or engineering degree simply because of some fee changes? After having put in years of work often specially geared toward achieving a career in their desired field, these students are likely to just suffer the increased HECS which will ultimately decrease their future economic mobility and increase the burden of debt they carry after graduating.
The fact that HECS debts are ultimately distributed in small payments which is added on to tax means that university fees are less of an issue upfront, with the financial burden pushed down the line it is much less likely that these fee increases will serve as any form of serious disincentive to prospective students, especially if the impacted areas of study are those of their natural interest . However, for that small cross section of students who may have natural interests in multiple areas and who might be inclined to make that decision on the basis of cost, they would be far more likely to choose a STEM degree if other, more compelling incentives like completely free tuition were offered rather than only marginal discounts for pursuing these fields at the expense of law/economics/humanities.
This system would better serve those students who are facing the trade off and may actually incentivise them to pick a different degree the government views as more economically valuable. The result of this suggestion would not only be an incentivisation of STEM without unfairly punishing humanities but also a reduction in the debt burden for those future STEM students while also ensuring all courses are funded fairly.
What is also to be factored in is that Law and Economic degrees are only climbing up by 28%, not more than doubling like the humanities. I’d argue this could work for humanities if it weren’t for the fact that HECS debt makes the price of tuition fees less of an issue, the only effective way of making this fee increase a genuine disincentive to study would be if an upfront cost were attached. We’ve seen before though the significant detriments to social mobility when only those who can afford education upfront can access it; the better way to disincentive students from taking humanities degrees in is to not make undesirable degrees more expensive and desirable ones slightly cheaper, but to actually incentivise the completion of desired degrees. This could be achieved by an agreement between the Commonwealth and STEM students that the HECS fees associated with STEM subjects will be nullified if the student completes their undergraduate degree. This not only incentives students to choose to study STEM subjects at university if they are so inclined, but also incentivises those students to see the degree through and graduate with qualifications they can use to fill the employment gaps in Australia’s STEM fields.
Something else that is rarely mentioned when discussing the disastrous reforms is that due to an overall decrease in revenue to universities (that isn’t being made up by the government) it will mean STEM students are still hurt because it cuts funding to universities, and in turn lowers per capita funding for students themselves. This means that universities will have further troubles balancing allocations of funds towards subjects which doesn’t help given the barrage of job losses and wages cuts at universities.
There needs to be an incentivisation of STEM subjects in universities and a measure to handle droves of students joining universities but striking students with fee increases and universities with revenue cuts in tumultuous times is not the way to go.
Sources:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-19/university-fees-tertiary-education-overhaul-course-costs/12367742
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-20/coronavirus-impact-on-universities-research-worse-than-gfc/12264606
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australian-university-job-cuts-losses-tally-2020-9
Also read these:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2020/06/19/coronavirus-universities-fees/
https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-doesn-t-add-up-uni-funding-overhaul-will-also-hurt-stem-students-20200621-p554n9.html
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/14/university-funding-changes-centre-alliance-signals-it-may-back-coalition-bill
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/19/australian-university-fees-arts-stem-science-maths-nursing-teaching-humanities
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/06/humanities-students-will-pay-up-to-113-more-for-uni-courses-after-centre-alliance-backs-changes
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-19/charles-darwin-university-job-cuts-77-positions-to-go/12900216
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/uni-fee-hikes-another-blow-for-class-of-2020-20200620-p554ih.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-25/australian-university-reform-changes-social-work-exclusion/12589626
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-21/university-fees-overhaul-deregulation-key-difference/12372566
Please note this is an opinion piece. The views expressed within are exclusively those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Tertangala.
Tertangala editors assisted with the copy of this article.
The post Opinion: More Short-Sighted Changes from Blind Governments Will Hurt Future Uni Students appeared first on The Tertangala.
