Senate debates

Wednesday, 7 October 2020

Bills

Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020; Second Reading

11:51 am

Photo of Rachel SiewertRachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the debate on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020. This bill continues this government's war on higher education and universities. So much for the clever country! I and my father were, in fact, first in family. I know that sounds strange to people, but we actually started our higher education on the same day. My father dropped me off at university on our first morning and then he went off to his new institution. I can't tell you what a difference higher education made to my father's life. He became a teacher, something he had wanted to do for his whole life. But, growing up as he did in a very low-income family, he never had the opportunity—or even the dream—to go to higher education until he was able to access free university education, until he was able to access free higher education. And until the day he retired he absolutely loved his work. He gave so much to the schools that he taught in. In fact, not long ago I bumped into one of his former students, who said to me what a difference my father made and how much he enjoyed being in his classes. So higher education does make a real difference to people's lives.

Coming from a low-income family myself, I would not have gone to university if it was not for the fact that I could get—I was one of the lucky ones—a free education. I doubt I'd be standing in this place if I had not had access to that system, so I'm very passionate about free university education. I know what a difference it makes not only to individuals but to the community. I'd argue that the lives of my father's students were affected by the fact that he went and got a higher education and became a teacher.

I'm very, very concerned about the effect this bill will have on students, on the quality of education, on educational opportunities and on the community. This bill does not take into account the precarious situation that we are transitioning to in a post-COVID world. We must invest in students and our education system, not make it harder to access education, not make it less sustainable, and we should not be increasing student debts.

We already know that younger people are facing a much more precarious future. They are already carrying a heavier burden into the future given the world we are currently in. This package will more than double students' fees in the humanities and social sciences and slash up to $900 million in vital funding for teaching and learning. This includes STEM and nursing courses. This will punish struggling students.

The government's claims to support regional universities with this plan don't stack up. It will force regional universities to teach more students with much less money and force students to go into huge debts to get their degrees. The consequences for regional communities will be more job losses, less local investment and fewer options for students.

The package doesn't create anywhere near enough new places to satisfy the emerging demand for education to retrain during and following the COVID-19 recession. The bill guts research funding by rejecting the long-held notion that base funding, student fees and Commonwealth contributions should provide for teaching, scholarship and base research capability. The government will come in here and crow that last night they put $1.5 billion into research. That nowhere near covers the gap, which is estimated to be around $6 billion. Again I say: so much for the clever country!

Universities should be well funded, high quality and fee free for all students. I passionately, as I said, believe in the power of higher education to improve people's lives—not only the individual but our whole community. This package shifts costs of higher education much more strongly from government to students. Higher education in Australia has been hit incredibly hard, as we know, by the COVID crisis. These new laws will make things worse. The government should invest in our universities and TAFEs, not starve them of funds.

I want to look at some of the key aspects of this bill: changes to student fees, increasing the length of time to pay off HECS debts, and other challenges that students are currently facing. In many cases, this will make it harder and more expensive for young people to access higher education.

There's a reduction in fees for STEM, teaching and nursing. The Greens welcome a reduction in fees for these types of courses. Education should be affordable, and these course fees have meant that for some students higher education is out of reach. However, the bill also more than doubles the price—raising fees by 113 per cent—of humanities courses other than English and other languages and, fortunately, social work, which was previously going to increase. When the government realised what a foolish thing it was to increase course fees for social work and how much we need social workers, they took it, as I understand, off that list of the higher fees.

The government is making a judgement here. The government's saying: 'These courses aren't valuable. You might not get work.' Well, tell that to all those people working in those areas. How important they are to our community! How important they are to individuals! How important social work, for example, is to our community!

This will undoubtedly decrease the number of students who seek humanities courses, and that would be detrimental to individuals, workplaces and the community. A Deloitte report in 2018 on the value of humanities found that the value of humanities was to:

… (1) employers, through having a more productive, innovative and multidisciplinary workforce; (2) the broader community, through better informed citizens and a better understanding of our place in the world; (3) graduates, through increasing their lifetime earnings by increasing wages and job prospects; and (4) our society, through the contributions of Humanities research to improved social outcomes.

There's a 28 per cent rise for law and business. Average course fees are expected to rise by more than seven per cent over the next year.

Students are already expected to live far below the poverty line. Youth Allowance is one of the lowest payments, and they are disproportionately affected by insecure, casual work.

It's important to note that the government is failing these students and their future. We must ensure that students are able to live above the poverty line and don't have to sacrifice study to maintain insecure work. Many students I've heard from are trying to work full time and try to maintain a full study course. The length of time to pay off the HECS debt could take up to 20 years to pay off a three-year arts degree, according to our modelling. That's conservative, as it assumes that graduates will be able to access full-time, consistent work from the moment they graduate. It doesn't account for the years taken off for parental leave and other reasons and doesn't account for further study or the fact that graduates are increasingly in part-time and insecure work for much longer, certainly, than when I came out of university. This means that a generation that is already finding it challenging to find work and obtain homeownership is getting further and further behind. Homeownership is getting further out of reach, and they face additional and long-term debt, tipping the hand against them more.

Affordable and accessible education is essential for a community to thrive. We need, particularly in these challenging economic times, to make educational opportunities easier to access. Government needs to invest in a skilled, adaptable and trained workforce. We don't disagree with that, but government needs to make sure that we are meeting people's needs, that it is affordable and that the community and young people want to take it up. We shouldn't saddle students with more debt.

Between $500 and $900 million of government contributions is being cut from teaching and learning funding. Students will be forced to make up much of the cuts through these fee hikes. Universities are already cutting jobs and courses around the country. We are losing key people. We are losing their academic contributions, their contribution to debates in this country and their contribution to student learning. The package reduces the overall government contribution to a domestic Commonwealth supported place from 58 per cent to 52 per cent, and the student contribution is rising from 42 per cent to 48 per cent to pay for additional places.

Government says the package will produce 39,000 additional places by 2023 and 100,000 by 2030. There is already a pre-existing issue with student places: the Costello baby boom cohort will start looking for university places over the next few years. The package does not account for the inevitable influx of people choosing to study during an economic downturn, nor are there anywhere near enough places to meet demand, and the government has provided no evidence that price signals will funnel students into the courses they claim to be prioritising. This punishes everybody. It punishes students, the future and our community.

The bill will punish struggling students by removing their access to HECS if they fail more than half of their subjects. As a number of other people have mentioned in this debate, this is grossly unfair. I personally know a number of students who in their first year of university did badly. They went on to be outstanding students and went on to make outstanding contributions in their choice of work. Nine hundred million dollars for an industry-linked fund for investment in science, technology, engineering and mass education is to be paid for by cuts in teaching and the learning budget. You can't rob Peter to pay Paul.

This package creates a perverse incentive for universities to enrol more students in higher fee degrees. This is going to lead to perverse outcomes. This is bad legislation. We should be nurturing our universities to do the job that they're there to do, which is to educate and prepare students for their contributions to our community. We know we need to increase jobs—we know that. But this is also about making sure that we are preparing our students for their contributions to our community. All young people should be given an opportunity, whether it's in TAFE, in higher education at university or in apprenticeships. We should be making sure that all our young people have an opportunity to contribute, do what they want to do and make the contributions they want to make. We should not be picking winners, which is what this government is doing. This is bad legislation. It is going to detrimentally affect young people, students and our community. This has long-term consequences for our community. Make no mistake: this is bad legislation and should not be passed.

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