Message from the Vice Chancellor

The Student Contribution Amount (SCA): ‘Fees’ revisited 2004.

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote in Monitor about the contributions made by students towards the costs of their Higher Education. Since the University Council has just revisited the question of these contributions, I thought it worthwhile, particularly for our external readers and our alumni, to discuss this issue again.

It is critical to distinguish between the ideal political position one argues for in the national agenda, and that we need to decide on within the University once legislation has laid down a framework in which we must operate. In the 2002 Monitor article within the national political debate (also printed by the Melbourne Age, but edited there to remove some of the caveats), I wrote as follows:

“The consequence of any form of increased charges upon Australian students … is likely to be a reduction in the number of students entering the system, and a worsening of the distribution of their socioeconomic status. This prediction relates to … the range in which demand is uninfluenced by price. …. In Australia, … personal returns [for graduates] are less substantial [than in the US], even though they generate a tax flow to government which exceeds government’s initial investment. [So] it is likely that Australian demand would fall in the face of increased charges. This would be disastrous for the enhancement of equity in our society. It is quite clear that talent is widely distributed in our society, so that both the number and the diversity of people entering our university system are important factors on our nation’s economic success. So a policy of enhanced fees, with resultant decreased participation, would also be disastrous for our economy.

What then is the solution? Student: staff ratios have worsened drastically in the last decade…. .This trend needs to be reversed by increased resource provision in the operating grant per EFTSU [equivalent full time student unit]. Government also needs to fund the equitable expansion of the system, since this will increase economic output …..

This enhanced support must include focused mechanisms for encouraging the disadvantaged SES [socio-economic status] groups to realize that University education is good for them, and that Universities create jobs for the economy and for them.”

Our student activists at UC recently made enjoyable good fun of the first quoted
sentence, which appeared in the Age without my caveats: they did so because I
recommended to our Council that the SCA (which is repaid through the Higher Education Contribution Scheme after graduation) be increased by 20%, a little less than the maximum newly permissible. The students caricatured me as a Janusian figure, about which I was almost flattered!

I presented my recommendation to the Council so as to help us to avoid a drop in quality of support for teaching and learning through information and communications technology, and through library and scholarly resources such as on-line journals.

The reassuring grace of Australian student contributions is that they do not have to be paid up-front: so no student need be more ‘out of pocket’ while studying. Our own NATSEM (National Centre for Socioeconomic Modelling) showed also that the rise in 2005 of the threshold at which graduates begin to repay their SCA makes it a more favourable proposition for low income graduates than ever before. Our students work for pay for an average of 21h per week, which puts great stress on their work for study, of which we expect about 40h per week during semester.

If we could get the complicated message to economically disadvantaged families that they will suffer less rather than more in comparison with other graduates if their student members remain economically disadvantaged, and also the message that they most probably will not remain so, we might enhance social diversity in higher education.

The Council, in the face of theatrical pressure from a small group of students,
accepted the recommendation. Quality can continue to live! I do not renege from my view that the Australian Government should support more higher education places, and should enhance their funding for them, since they receive far more back from the graduates in the form of taxes.

I also took the opportunity to argue this to a senior delegation from Thailand, including the Deputy Prime Minister, who visited last week to discuss how they might implement a ‘HECS-like’ student contribution scheme in Thailand.

I plead (and admitted) ignorance of the Thai taxation system, but I was not recalcitrant in arguing the benefits of public funds supporting student fees so that the graduates in turn can support the public, as they do here. HECS may not have ‘deterred’ entrants to universities, as our Department of Education Science and Training like to argue; but it has not ‘enhanced’ the social diversity of our entrants.

Interestingly, Dr Curtin, a research fellow in economics at the ANU has recently entered this political debate with a position quite opposed to conventional wisdom about HECS, and quite congruent with my own. Thailand may be able to do better.

Roger Dean, Vice-Chancellor

July 4, 2004

Previous columns

SCA Fees revisited

About our Vice-Chancellor: The Academic and the Man

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Last Updated on August 1, 2005