… is cognitively and politically compromised.
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Hmmm, according to that article, Australia has the most expensive uni fees in the world (excepting USA). Still a very good deal for Aussie students.
Getting something on a “receive now, pay-later-when-you-can-interest-free” is a very good deal.
Princeton University, one of the Ivy League universities, has a “needs-blind” admissions policy. If you can’t afford to pay the fees, they won’t charge. If you need financial assistance to study, they’ll give you that too. And this isn’t in the form of loans. If you need any financial help, they give it in the form of grants, rather than loans.
I know HECS debts used to scare some of my country high school buddies, and that was back when they were a fraction of what they are now. But that’s OK in Liberal-land, I suppose, because those kids should be off doing apprenticeships and don’t need to fill their pretty little heads with academic knowledge.
Australia, land of the free… where in the dead of night you can still feel the convict chains rattling.
https://secure.democrats.org.au/campaigns/id_card/index.htm
Then there’s that ID card… Brought to you by the people responsible for “children overboard” and “wheat for arms”… because citizens are so much less trustworthy than the Howard Government.
All I know is when you didn’t have HECS the proportion of Australians studying at university was a hell of a lot lower than it is now. You don’t have to pay HECS if you don’t want to, but they still seem to be lining up to do so. Obviously Youth Allowance must be more than compensating for the HECS impost.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, eh, Obs?
Pity about the post part though. The move towards mass participation in tertiary education was well on by 1984 as senior high school retention rates started to rise.
HECS was very much a policy response to this trend, not a cause of it.
Of course the merits or otherwise of HECS as a policy is independent of the OP which points out that PC is telling porkies to defend his governments changes to the policy…
I guess the policy is that lies are ok. Just as long as he hasn’t met Brian Burke.
Jesus, Phil!! Breathe, mate, breathe!!
I guess that’s why Howard wants to set up those Federally-run tertiary education centres, Austin – that’s where they’ll run Avoiding Brian Burke 101.
In fact, the Howard Government could run a great set of community colleges – Spinning Policy For Beginners, How to Backflip In Line With Opinion Polls, Advanced Muckraking and Beat-ups, Yoga And Pilates For Employment Flexibility, Artful Deception Appreciation (with Fox News and Daily Telegraph electives)… the list is endless.
And user-pays up front, naturally. Not HECS eligible.
I gave up on reading it. The concept of paragraphs exists for a reason.
And really, blog comments should not, in general, be more than three paragraphs if possible. Some particularly jargon-dense threads may be an exception, but this isn’t one of them.
If you’ve got that much to say, Phil, post it on your blog (in paragraphs) and post a summarising comment with a link, please.
Money quote from Gunstone’s excellent apples-to-apples summary of the LN/P’s anti-education policies:
· OECD reports show that the average change in public university funding across the OECD for the last decade is a 48 per cent increase; in Australia it is a seven per cent decrease.
· In 2006, the Australian public university system received just over 40 per cent of its recurrent funds from government. This is the lowest figure for any public university system in the world.
The LN/P deserve to lose the next election on the basis of their neglect of sci-tech education alone. Never mind the atrocious Work Choices legislation or white-anting of Medicare.
Only lingering doubts about the ALP’s cultural lobbies and policies will cause marginal voters pencils to waver. Is the soul of the Left committed to the fiscal Class War or the Culture War?
You would be mistaken in presuming that anything resembling a unitary soul of the Left exists.
Everyone:
Hate to be picky but ….. whatever happened to that glorious concept of User Pays?
All companies have to do is front up with uncosted and unjustified wish-lists of what qualifications they want their “contractors” and employees to have and the government plays fairy-godmother for them …. but it is the families of students and the citizen-taxpayers who have to part with their hard-earned cash to grant these companies their whims and wishes.
Companies want unnecessary and inappropriate qualifications? ….. Then make them pay for the privledge.
b,t,w, If Howard has now become The Albatross …. and Costello has lost the plot …… who will lead the Liberals into the election, Prime Minister Abbot or Prime Minister Nelson?
Crowlie: On the ID card – you ain’t seen nothing. The AusCheck bill info page at the senate talks about Aviation and Maritime Security Identification Cards, but the text of the bill allows it to be applied to pensions, child endowment, telecommunications, access to services, funding to states, and any other matter over which the Commonwealth executive has powers. Misleading descriptions of the purpose of the bill on senate inquiry pages – what next?
Chris on 13 March 2007 at 4:44 pm
I do not assume the Left has a unitary soul. I merely desire it.
The split in the Left allows the Right to drive a wedge between the conservative Old Left (“battlers”) prefer fiscal progressive policies and the constructivist New Left (“luvvies”) who prefer cultural diversity policies.
The Right will continue to bring home the politico-economic con so long as the Left remains divided on the cultural issue.
Jack,
Shut up about the deficiencies you percieve in the left and for once address the bloody topic. Or Clear off.
I wouldn’t doubt that the current Federal govt take their cues on all manner of policy from the U.S. Regardless of what individual states in the US are able to pull off in terms of better education deals, it remains a fact that on a Federal level, both here and there, (and we are much smaller), military spending has been a focal point of overarching importance, eclipsing practically all else.
Educating people, so they begin to realise what a load of wicked bollocks they’re being fed, is simply not important. And it certainly doesn’t generate instantaneous ‘wealth’–well not the kind that makes the Treasurer’s eyes gleam with delight.
Gummo Trotsky on 13 March 2007 at 7:10 pm
Gummo, my first comment was specifically aimed at noting the efficiencies of the Left and deficiencies of the Right:
The LN/P deserve to lose the next election on the basis of their neglect of sci-tech education alone. Never mind the atrocious Work Choices legislation or white-anting of Medicare.
My comment on 13 March 2007 at 6:54 pm was to rectify a misintepretation of my remarks made in a comment by Chris on 13 March 2007 at 4:44 pm.. And to elaborate slightly.
I did not realise that before making a comment I must undertake a vow of silence about Left-wing intellectual and ideological incompetence. Your abusive response being a diagnostic.
There are a lot of errors in this article as well. For instance in Germany there do exist tuition fees in many states now (and I’m going to speak about Germany because that has been where I’ve had the most experience). Many people in Oz seem to miss this as education policy in Germany is almost completely a state government issue, not a federal issue. The fees are generally between 400 and 600 Euro a semester.
In addition to this, the German equivalent of the Youth Allowance for students is run more like the HECS system, it is basically a low interest loan which has to be paid back once a student enters the workforce. In general, the size of this loan is on the order of a HECS payment, though you obviously don’t have to spend all of your loan and so the repayments aren’t always so harsh. Unlike HECS however, the loan is means tested and is dependent on you exam results. If for some reason you fall behind in your studies (which is often the case if you have to supplement your income by working part time) you can kiss your support from the German government goodbye. This makes it essentially impossible to maintain your studies as you need to find some other source of income to actually live. This system makes it much easier for students with financial support from their families to receive a university education and is often criticised for this.
Interestingly, their has been quite a bit of discussion about the German federal government taking over the education system in the next few years and imposing a Australian-like HECS system supplemented by a Youth Allowance. Angela Merkel has even mentioned the Australian HECS system by name as being an ideal model to aspire to because it doesn’t discriminate (so much) between people from different backgrounds.
Gummo Trotsky on 13 March 2007 at 7:10 pm
Gummo, my first comment was specifically aimed at noting the efficiencies of the Left and deficiencies of the Right in relation to this topic ie education policies:
The LN/P deserve to lose the next election on the basis of their neglect of sci-tech education alone. Never mind the atrocious Work Choices legislation or white-anting of Medicare.
My comment on 13 March 2007 at 6:54 pm was to rectify a misintepretation of my remarks made in a comment by Chris on 13 March 2007 at 4:44 pm.. And to elaborate slightly.
I did not realise that before making a comment I must undertake a vow of silence about Left-wing intellectual and ideological incompetence. Your abusive response being a diagnostic.
Forgive the Alzheimer’s but wasn’t it the legendry John Dawkins that introduced HECS after the thin edge of the wedge of HEAC in 1986?
Well fancy that mick, but I guess we all need to acknowledge the wisdom of the ALP for introducing the current Australian system Frau Merkel wants to emulate.
Yeah, shutup Jack or you’ll give the left some useful strategies to gain power.
“Companies want unnecessary and inappropriate qualifications? ….. Then make them pay for the privledge.”
Well firstly Graham they would like necessary and appropriate qualifications, but getting that out of the current education lobby/producer group, in the appropriate quantities, is asking the impossible and secondly they’d be only too happy to pay providing the recipient couldn’t abscond with their investment. However you know only too well how so many of them regularly sack their boss and do abscond. Umm..err..what would you suggest here…?
Observa:
[1] Stop that quasi-socialist welfare handout to corporate bludgers …. that’s only rewarding stupdity, laziness, inefficiency and fake management …. if they can’t prove they actually need people with those specific qualifications, make them pay their full share of tax!!!
[2] Give real encouragement to firms that do real in-house training …. and “discouragement” to firms that persist in failing to provide it or put up sham or dummy training. And, learning from all the rorts that wrecked the perfectly workable Training Guarantee system, have mandatory prison sentences and confiscation of all the assets for any proprioters and managers who rort the system; a few hundred broke and behind bars should be enough to serve as a warning.. Training Guarantee should have propelled Australia into the front of the economic and technological pack ….. but all the rorting of that system has now put us among the stragglers ….. next time, get tough with the bludgers and rorters from the outset..
[3] Cut university student numbers in half. Quantity does not equal quality. Take the selection process right out of the hands of the universities so that the only criterion for admission would be exceptional talent. The rich parents of dullards would be forced to go off-shore to buy degrees; the outflow of foreign exchange would be miniscule compared with the tremendous improvement there would be in the Australian economy as a result of restricting our universities’ admission to the best and brightest. Oh yes …. pay the students a real wage ….. and get rid of any leftover teaching:research ratios as well …. and give university staff secure tenure and decent pay – with sabbaticals and refresher breaks in industry too.
That should be enough to start a brawl. I look forward to the hate-mail …
Sssh, David. HECS is TEH EVIL, and like all in this country that is EVIL, it is the fault of the Liberal Party.
The fact that it is a progressive system for society to reclaim some of the private benefits that accrue to graduates, should not be mentioned. And particularly don’t mention that a number of other governments around the world think highly of the system, and have or will introduce similar arrangements.
Still, it could be improved, by:
a) reducing or even abolishing HECS for basic enabling disciplines in the Arts and Sciences;
b) giving students a half-decent living allowance from age 18; and
c) cutting their numbers drastically. (Graham Bell is quite right. The low capabilities and sheer bloody disinterest of the bottom third to half of the student body suggests that they really would be better off doing apprenticeships.)
Howard has a pre-WWII conservative aversion to “braininess”. Almost Colonel Blimpish.
The general bias against “braininess” hasn’t stopped Howard spending like a drunken sailor on leave on causes that inspire him. The SMH reports Andrew Norton of the CIS crunching the numbers:
Government spending per person, adjusted for inflation, ballooned 17.5 per cent from 1995-96 to 2004-05.
I picked up on Howard’s Big Govt conservatism about four years ago, back when the Left was still bleating about the horrors of “economic rationalism”. No such luck even for the perpetually deluded. Howard’s conservative socialism has consolidated regressive wealthfare rather than progressive welfare. Norton goes onto say:
Once again, parents who already had their children in private schools were the main beneficiaries of this policy decision, which rewarded them for something they would have done anyway.
A noticeable absentee from this catalogue of spending is the higher education sector, which saw funding averaged over the population decline 26 per cent over the decade.
Policies to index university grants at less than inflation, raise HECS and hold down student numbers defy the trend.
I have doubts about the SMH’s reporters ideological bias in interpretation of these figures. Can anyone breakdown the breakdown of expenditure trends for public/private schools during the Howard years?
My impression is that the big increase in private school education expenditure are due to the shift of pupils out of state schools and into independent and religious schools. The non-state school education now has a higher ratio of the total student population. Thus per-pupil expenditure in state schools has probably kept track with real economic growth.
The non-govt school sector costs more to run as it is a “superior good” where demand increases with income. This secular tendency may explain the “bias” in per-pupil expenditure towards non-state schools, owing to compositional changes rather than any sinister federal plot.
From 2004:
http://www.acsso.org.au/elect04.htm#facts
As to your concern that the SMH might have distorted Andrew Norton’s argument, the original is online:
http://www.cis.org.au/POLICY/summer_06/polsummer06_norton.htm
By the way an increase of 3.9 percent over a decade is hardly a seismic shift to private schools.
Robert Merkel and Mick:
Thanks for mentioning American ivy-league universities and for that overview of the German system.
Paulus:
Slashing student numbers alone would exacerbate the problem; it would be only one leg of a table
The other three legs of the table would be
[i] An independent, flexible and impartial external admission system [and that's definitely not the manifestly failed Year 12 exit circus] so that not only are the thick and the lazy kept out but also so that those who prefer to work or travel or marry and gain life experience before settling down to tertiary study are not disadvantaged,
[ii] A crack-down on employers demanding unnecessary qualifications willy-nilly. Change may be painful at first but the consequent improvements in productivity and profitablity wpuld soon make firms forget any initial pain.
[iii] A sufficient funding of universities so as to put an end to the credentials racket. Universities that are more interested in chasing money than in the quality of their research and teaching are not going to produce too many future Nobel Prize winners ….. nor too many decent primary school teachers nor accountants either!
Graham,
A quick solution to the overall problem would be to wrap up all expenditure on Senior High school (yrs 11 and 12) Tertiary and Tafe along with Student Allowance and the First Home Owners Grant scheme and divvy it up in an allocated Life Grant which can be redeemed in two ways- Either for the purchase of recognised further education at the institution of choice,(including on the job training) or in the purchase of a home. Whilst the spending of the LG on education reduces the balance of the individual account, using any or all of it to purchase a home is quarantined until retirement and returned to the Life Grant upon sale of the home to be reused. Unused credit in the Life Grant fund could accrue interest to keep up with inflation. Spend it and you are making the call on a better return on your investment dollars.
Observa:
Despite previous stoushes I have had with you …. this looks quite interesting ….. wonder how the hoodlums will loot it too?
Anyone who believes Gummo Trotsky is accurate, thorough and balanced in his research is politically and cognitively compromised. The Age reports that the education tendencies under the Howard govt are not nearly so bleak as implied by GT:
[the OECD's Education at a Glance 2005].
This was the highest of the 30 member nations, coming in above Britain and Sweden where children are likely to be students for just over 20 years.
If you took the Larva Prodders at face value you would suppose that AUS was slipping behind the civilized pack in the educations stakes. How come the OECD shows we have moved to the top of the OECD in learning time?
Good value for money from the educational statists. Public school teachers have my sympathy.
Why are women more averse to figuring than men? Is it nature, nurture or both. Larva Prodders are curiously silent on this big question.
What, no ritualised denunciation of male chauvinist pigs? The Age is slipping.
Ahh the evil racism of the Howard govt. Always playing the xenophobic card.
Since AUS is about average in OECD income this result is what one would expect. We punch roughly our weight in primary/secondary education spending. No doubt a class bisas in class sizes.
So Australia punches above its weight in tertiary education spending. No doubt Howard could and should do better. But Larva Prodders need to show more epistemology and less ideology in analysing the statistics.
Can’t help yourself, can you Jack? Did you actually check the date on that article? Here’s a bit of the URL:
/news/national/australian-kids-top-of-the-class/
2005/09/13/1126377315167.html
Which indicates its old, old news. Dopes it not occur to you that there might be more timely and up to date research available? And finally that none of this addresses Gunstone’s criticisms of Costello, to wit, that his remarks on overseas policy and practice (the US in particular) are factually inaccurate.
Now who’s looking cognitively compromised?
Gummo Trotsky on 14 March 2007 at 7:38 pm
I have already quoted from more “timely and up to date research”, see above. And more below. You might try to follow my example instead of trawling the op-eds for some easy listening, golden oldie Costello-hating tunes.
I quoted an 18 month old news report because it was easily accessible, digestible and quotable. This at least made readers aware of recent OECD comparisons of a more general nature.
The most recent 2006 OECD report in the same genre shows that AUS’s reasonably good educational status has not deteriorated markedly in the past year. Thus the 2005 report is not “old, old news” in the sense of being outdated. Hereunder some money quotes, just to rub it in:
Educational expectancy – the number of years of study over a lifetime based on present patterns of participation – is above 17 years on average in the OECD area and above 20 years in Australia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
On average across the 24 OECD countries with comparable data, 5% of those at the typical age of graduation have completed the tertiary-type A level of education – a figure that ranges from around 20% or less in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Turkey to more than 40% in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland.
However, in tertiary education the private share has risen overall. It went up by more than three percentage points in half of countries reporting data, and by over 9 percentage points in Australia, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Three OECD countries (Finland, Korea and the Netherlands) achieve statistically similar average scores that are higher than the average scores in all other OECD countries. Eleven other countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, and Switzerland) have mean scores that are above the OECD mean.
So the conclusions of the ultimate OECD report are not startlingly different from the the pentultimate one. As any common sensical person would expect.
GT says:
The problem with Gunstone’s thesis is not that it is wrong as it stands. I agree that Howard has not put as much effort into public funding of education as he should have.
The problem is that Gunstone and GT is that they have not drilled down into the data. Concentrating on the changes in public sector funding misses the changed in the private sector funding, a major part of the educational picture in recent times. This change is partly due to changes in govt policy, for which the govt is responsible.
Ignorance of this change makes a nonsense of the thrust of GT’s argument, which is that Howard govt has neglected education relative to comparable overseas states. Instead we get the usual ideological bias, all errors pointing in the same Leftist direction. Misleading the open-minded readers.
Not up to scientific scratch.
GT says:
GT still has egg on his face, despite feeble efforts to throw it back. I have used facts and logic to expose the shallow and tendentious nature of your post. He has responded with a lame bit of abuse and misdirection. His intellectual credibility is in tatters.
Phew someone’s been working harder than Mrs Costello’s vibrator!