Higher Education and the Election

With the Federal Election now two weeks old and yet to deliver a government, I thought now would be a chance to look at the education policies, such as as they, of the people purporting to represent the best interests of our nation.

Sure, I should have done this prior to the election. Who knows, this post could have achieved cult status and swayed the results in key marginal seats. I'm not taking responsibility for the hung parliament but I'm just pointing out that this should have been done beforehand. Better late than never.

Perhaps the reason why I didn't do it before (rampant laziness aside) is that Education scarcely rated a mention from either of the main parties.

Let's have a look at the ALP's site shall we?

To be fair the ALP's agenda (see http://www.alp.org.au/agenda/) has a whole section on a National Curriculum and an Australian Baccalaureate. The National Curriculum is actually good, as it has allowed for an ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank) for all Australians looking to enter University (except Queenslanders). As long as they actually take the best bits from all the state curricula, as oppose to just pandering to stronger lobbying from individual states, a national curriculum is good. It means that people can move to WA to take advantage of the minerals boom (for example) without stuffing up their kid's education (assuming you don't think bringing your kids up amongst rednecks won't stuff up their education).

The Australian Baccalaureate is "a new voluntary qualification that provides senior students with access to a credential of international standing – similar to national certificates like the British ‘A’ Levels and French Baccalaureate, the German and Finnish Arbitur, and the certificates of Australia’s regional neighbours." What I think is happening is that the ALP have been overwhelmed by Greg Valentine, the Australasian manager of the International Baccalaureate's, message that the IB is so much better than our current HSC and equivalents. Private and selective schools now offer the IB as an alternative to the HSC. Great. So why the fuck don't they just make the HSC, TCE, WACE, VCE etc the Australian Certificate of Education? After all, the A levels are actually the Advanced Level General Certificate of Education.

If we develop a national curriculum we can have an Australia-wide Certificate of Education, and the AB becomes somewhat redundant. I think anyway.

But, back to the point. I looked through the ALP's agenda site and couldn't find anything. It wasn't under 'Creating Jobs and Skills,' 'Science' and a couple of other agendas and the word 'University' isn't even used. How can you have a fucking Science or Skills policy that ignores higher education. Fuck!

What to the Liberals have in store?

For a start it took ages to open their site. www.liberal.org.au doesn't seem to work. Oops. I wonder whether that was like that during the election. Would we have had a hung parliament if their site worked, or were they worried treasury officials might look at their site and spot bullshit figures earlier than they did?

OK, So I went to Tony Abbott's website (http://www.nsw.liberal.org.au/house-of-representatives/tony-abbott.html) to see if he could help and found the Federal Action Plan.

Tony has Strong Plans (none of those weak as piss Labor plans) for everything. Including Higher Education. This is 12 pages if you include a title page but worryingly the opening page looks at Higher Education as an income earner (like coal).

More worrying however is that they want to bring back in full-fee places. These came in under Howard and the Liberals believe that all Australians should have "the option of paying for their own education at public universities." Just like international students. What they don't make clear is that universities let in Australians with the means to pay full fees (around 2 or 3 times HECS contributions) who also didn't get the marks required to access Commonwealth Supported Places. So the message is if your parents are loaded you don't need to be as clever. Nice one! So not only can they gain all the advantages of private education such as higher staff:student ratios, better learning resources, Army Cadet programs (they must be good for something) and learning how to wear a Boater Hat; rich kids under the Liberals also benefit from not needing to do as well as their poorer peers at School.

If this wasn't enough to make them look like fuckwits, they also plan to scrap the $433 million Labor Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program to increase participation by students from low SES backgrounds. Their thoughts are that it isn't supply but demand that is the problem. So let's just encourage poor primary students to believe that they can get to uni, even though they know they will have to score an ATAR up to 5 points higher than rich kids to do the same course because their parents can't afford to pay Full Fees. Clearly for rich kids the problem is supply, not demand.

The Liberal's plan seems to assume that just assuring Indian parents that their kids will be safe will solve all our challenges in recruiting international students. It ignores increased competition from the UK, US and other markets. It ignores the fact that China,our strongest market, is increasingly becoming capable of educating their students. It ignores the fact that a high AUD makes us less competitive internationally. And it ignores the fact that what drives demand is the quality of the institutions, and that dollars. However, there is no extra funding promised for universities. The extra funding is coming from growing international student numbers, attracted to Australia by our well-funded higher education system. Am I the only one who can see the flaw in that logic?

So the Liberals have a Higher Education policy proudly posted on their site, but all it really does is go back to what they had before Rudd. And during Howard's Prime Ministership, let us not forget that we went backwards in terms of investment in Higher Education (see an article by UWA's Professor da Sliva Rosa on this at http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201008192781/higer-education/australia-s-real-deficit-higher-education-finance-expert).

So neither the ALP nor the Liberals seem too focused on making us a clever country.

What do the Greens think?

The Greens education policy is fittingly found under the category 'Care for People' and states that "universities are places of learning and research where the needs of the whole community and the values of service to the public and scholarship take priority over sectional and commercial interests and academic freedom is protected." Which is a nice statement but isn't a policy as such, just a desire. They also want "free university education for Australian citizens, permanent residents and refugees." The advantage for the Greens is that they can want this but don't have to cost it up. So how much would this all cost to implement? I couldn't find it on their website and odds are they have no idea. Who cares - they will never govern in their own right so don't need to worry about that. They just need to push people towards thinking along those lines. It is a refreshing change from the other parties but isn't rounded out enough to be a policy. Sorry Greens.

So basically, no election is ever going to be won or lost over the issue of higher education. Why? Is it because it doesn't effect enough people? Hardly. With plans for up to 25% of young people going to university it effects a shit load more people than say 'boat people.' Who amongst us have had a beach picnic ruined by the arrival of refugees in the middle of it. Not many? What are the costs to the nation of people arriving unannounced on our shores. Shit all really. But it is much more exciting footage to show politicians looking tough on the bridge of a patrol boat than it is to show them looking smart at a university campus.

Higher education is not an issue because on the surface it seems to work OK. Sure now kids graduate with a lifetime of HECS debt and the whole funding model relies on being subsidised by international students, and we will have a critical shortage of potential academics, and campuses are overcrowded etc but no students are protesting and making noise. Why? because partly they are too busy working to support themselves and partly because they are so worried about a massive debt that education is about return on investment, and that means just studying and participating in something that will help you get a job.

Damn.