Sunday, March 18, 2007
Growing Esteem - Distribution of CSP places
Not only will it now take you longer to complete your degree, but most of these postgraduate courses will be at full fee cost, leaving students with a massive debt. Of the Commonwealth Supported Places [HECS] available, only 15% will be means tested, leaving many students unable to afford the cost of an education. This represents a shift to an increasingly corporatised higher education sector and sets a precedent for other universities to follow suit. We want CSP places to go to students who need them most, means testing of ALL CSP places would make this possible.
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3 comments:
Education should be free and merit based. But if the bastards are going to make it prohibitively expensive for most, at least they could PRETEND to care about equity.
Why should education be free (to local students)? The academics need to be paid, so it must cost someone something for this induatry to exist. We pay for food and shelter and health, why single out education as needing to be free???
As for access, if the government gives say $20 million to the uni, and this funds 4000 places, then fewer people get access to uni than under our current system where the user pays some of the cost, and more than 6000 students start an undergrad course at Melbourne each year. The funding levels from the government have been falling - this is a reality. The uni needs to respond somehow. More education $$ would be great, but this would come at a cost elsewhere - lower social benefits in public housing/social security, health etc.
So are you advocating we cut the number of people who can go to uni? Or just importing more international students to be cash cows and cross-subsidise the teaching of local students?
Diversity of education models is a good thing - if you don't like what Melbourne is doing, you can transfer to somewhere that does offer the tertiary education you want.
It's very complex ... but the debate about how our tertiary system should work is great. Keep blogging!
"We pay for food and shelter and health, why single out education as needing to be free"
Actually health is heavily subsidised and free for life-threatening conditions. So we are not singling out education! Anyway, free education improves social mobility and gives people the opportunity to reach their full potential.
"So are you advocating we cut the number of people who can go to uni?"
Your whole argument assumes that the total govt expend level on Education is fixed. If the Govt can suddenly announce it is dropping $6 bil on 24 jet aircraft, then there is nothing stopping them from just dropping that sort of money on Education instead
"if you don't like what Melbourne is doing, you can transfer to somewhere that does offer the tertiary education you want"
In the City of Melb, Melb Uni is the only central location Uni at this level.
In Sydney, USyd and UNSW are both central: so you get a real choice.
Monash is the only Uni with the same sort of level of education as unimelb, but it's too far away. I would have to move house seeing as the public transport is terrible out there. The social and bar scene out there sucks, unfortunately. But yeah you have a point - I might have to do that.
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