My friend who is currently in the US has just summed this up quite well: This is so important - You dont have to spend long in the US to realise that their higher education system is not one we want to emulate. The US is great in many ways, but everyone I have spoken to about our system of higher education is envious and wishes they had something similar. The only people who understand what deregulated university fees really mean and yet STILL support it, are those with great wealth, because they would prefer not to have to compete with the rest of us on a level playing field. If Pyne manages to get this awful and un-egalitarian legislation through parliament, I will seriously consider whether Australia is somewhere I want to return to. Once you allow this sort of enforced dividing of social classes, it will be nearly impossible to claw it back to some level of equity between the rich and poor in Australia. It will undo so much great work that we, as Australians, should be proud of and IT WILL dumb down the general populace. I know this much - if I was born and grew up in the US (the system Pyne and Hockey speak so fondly of), I would not even be going to university, because I couldnt afford to risk a 6-figure debt. University education has been shown time and time again to be a profitable social investment (and yes, even Arts degrees). Dont be fooled that the reason for deregulation is economic - it has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with a privileged minority feeling as though they are entitled to keep that privilege and will fight to slay competition from the broader population (and I thought capitalism was supposed to be about competition). Of course it goes without saying that all of these parliamentarians trying to make university unaffordable for the working class, had virtually free university educations, if not 100% free. Look on youtube for footage of Hockey protesting about the Hawke government introducing $250 admin fees and then try and take him seriously when he tells me, who will pay nearly 100 times what he did for a degree, that I should be happy that it may soon be 300 times what he paid. Adjusted for inflation, that still = a metric f*** tonne (a lot) more than he ever had to pay. Assholes. Theres no nice way of saying it.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 10:06:07 +0000
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