Cross-posted at Event Mechanics.
Ross Gittins has an article in the SMH on the relative wealth of university students. It is interesting reading. I was helped out by my folks for the final year and a half of my PhD in a direct way. My mum also used to send me cash every now and then during my candidature so I could buy some broccoli.
Two things that Gittins does not discuss that are important to talk about.
1) ‘Student’ is a structural subject position within the labour market. There are ’student’ jobs. ‘Students’ get a discount on a lot of things from movies to public transport. The character of the labour of a ’student’ is primarily based in the service industry and organised around affective labour. The economy (and hence capitalists) need students to carry out ’student’ labour. I worked in a servo the four years of my undergraduate honours degree, only moving home for my final honours year to make sure I did well.
2) The nature of being a student has shifted from my parents’ generation to my generation. My mum got paid to go to teachers’ college and she was there fulltime (like 9 to 5 fulltime, not 20 hours a week ‘fulltime’). Given the option to go to uni for 2 years and get paid to do it compared to going to uni for up to 4 years and stuff around trying to balance study, work and the rest of life, I don’t know, but I think many students would take the two year option.
Why has this shift occurred? Two reasons.
Firstly, see point 1. Gittens does not mention this. Students don’t have much money sure, and ‘living like a student’ is probably a life enriching, if not humbling experience for many sons and daughters of privilege, but studying also ‘costs’ them at least two years of life and four years of bullshit labour that is required for the service-based economy to function.
Secondly, ‘fulltime’ students don’t show up on unemployment stats. Here is the ‘international standard’ definition of unemployment from this report:
[P]eople are unemployed if they did not work for at least one (paid) hour in the previous week, were actively seeking work and were able to accept a job in the next week if it were available.
Therefore, there is a governmental incentive to make unemployment figures look lower than the real employment problem in Australia, and most developed countries worldwide, under-employment.
My point is a simple one. Gittins sets up the problem for students in the economy as a lack of disposable and necessary income. This is wrong. The real problem is the structural position of students as having to become ’student labour’ and hence a large proportion of the surplus labour used to control the casualised service industry workplace.
Absolutely. I’m actually pretty steaming mad at Gittins’ refusal to talk about student poverty as being unrelated to HECS. And it was a refusal, not just an oversight. HECS isn’t the problem, HECS is a bargain, as he rightly points out. What’s hard about being a student is meeting what HECS doesn’t cover – rent, food, transport, books, clothes. This requires working so much that many people can’t get the maximum value out of their time at uni, even when they are on YA benefits. Since government still pays for most of that, it means taxpayers aren’t getting as good a return on investment from people who sacrificed grades to go flip burgers.
Its interesting to me though that almost nobody in Aus seems inclined to take out private loans to cover living expenses while studying. Most of my american acquaintances seem to do this as a matter of course, and I’m not sure if its just cultural or whether there aren’t any suitable products offered by banks. It certainly never occurred to me; I just worked as many hours as I could get away with and shoved everything else onto a credit card, which I then worked to pay off over the summer.
I took out a loan to get through uni without working. I was doing a science degree which involved just over 30 contact hours a week, plus I had weekly written & research assignments – IOW study was a 40+ a week ‘employment’ for me.
As I had come from a combination difficult home life and small economy where I’d had no chance to get much if any real work experience, and this was economically depressed Tas in the 1990s, trying to get a job was incredibly hard, on top of there being the problem that the only time I really had to offer was the weekends.
I was at uni at the time when there was still Austudy, and they introduced the scheme where you could trade in a proportion or all of your Austudy allowance for a loan of 1:1 dollars (ie if you were on just under $7k Austudy as I was, I traded the whole lot in and got just under $14k), but of course the catch was – told to you upfront – that you then owed the government the full amount, not just the matching part to your original entitlement.
This was a rip-off (I came out of uni owing not just a little over $10k in HECS, but much more significantly, nearly $40k in Financial Supplement Loan, as it was called) in that you had to owe not just your actual loan but the bit you would have been given for free; but it was also a life saver as it allowed me to complete a very heavy university combined arts/science degree with honours without going below the poverty line or having to find work.
It also highlighted though just how inadequate the Austudy allowance was / is. I was in Hobart, which at the time at least had low rent. But still by the time you covered living & study expenses, life wasn’t exactly fun. Even if you worked in the summer holidays, that amount would not be enough by itself to fully supplement the miserly Austudy – assuming you were lucky enough to be on the full rate.
My uni life was made really enjoyable by having a decent income, even if it did mean that it’s taken me until the end of last financial year to be finally clear of all government loans and debts, and that is only thanks to being fortunate enough to get relatively high paid jobs in Tas. Others of my friends will be hampered by the debt for a longtime coming.
I also agree about the reliance on student labour in the economy. Hell, it’s hard not to have the impression that core parts of the sex industry would be in trouble if it wasn’t for desparate students willing to do just about anything to get by.
Gittins also then assumes that students can be supported by their parents and use that support to top up their meagre income. But what happens if you come from a poor family who can’t support you financially? It’s an attitude that entrenches inequality.
Recently, Melbourne Uni found that about 400 of their students are homeless. Some people are going to say, maybe they’re not really homeless as they can couch surf at friends’ place etc. But the definition of homelessness is about a lack of stability and security in housing.
He also doesn’t talk about what effect working these hours has on students’ studies etc. It’s a glib article from someone who’s usually sensible.
Also, myriad, hospitality and retail. Half my students from media/comms in semester 1 seem to work at the City David Jones! Retailers and cafe owners and restauranteurs get to employ “well spoken” and “well presented” – ie middle class kids on cruddy casual wages and conditions (talk to anyone who actually works in a department store casually) who are reassuring to upscale customers rather than taking folks off the dole. There’s definitely a class thing at work in the affective labour businesses.
What makes me hopping mad with the sort of attitudes expressed by Gittins is the assumption that all university graduates are aged 25 of less,and have a lifetime to benefit from their studies. It is no wonder the number of mature-aged students is falling off. We don’t hear so much about mid-life career changes any more – who can afford them?
The income threshold and indexing of HECS can be a big problem. It amounts to a charge on post-graduate studies, as your HECS is being increased while you are not in a position to earn enough to pay any off. Ditto if you break from work to have/raise children. And what about people who go into careers where it can take a few years to reach the income threshold?
I found the remarks about taking longer to pay off HECS for sole parents strange to. As a sole-parent, I pay the same amount on HECS as someone on the same income with no children. In my first job, the amount taken in HECS was equal to the amount received in FTB.
As for kids at home, someone has to meet those expenses. And it is income that determines if parents are having to support students, not location. You are expected to support children who stay at school until they are are 25, regardless of where the student lives or studies. The income cut-offs are ridiculous, even worse than the Medicare levy cut-offs that the government is so keen to change. It leaves me shaking my head in disbelief that my disabled daughter (who will probably never be independent) is an adult at 16, but my university student daughter living interstate won’t be an adult until she is 25!
And, don’t forget that not all university graduates earn large amounts of money. We aren’t all lawyers and doctors. I know graduates who have cracked $40,000 pa 10 years out from graduation. What are the current rates for nurses? teachers?
Emphatically agree, Mark. I watched friends work themselves into the ground in various hospitality positions, and get treated like sh*t. Also, that particularl industry has a very ‘party hard’ culture, which sounds fun until you watch a bunch of people trying to do well at uni turn into drug addicts because of the combined pressure of study work and the confluence of those two cultures.
I don’t regret my debt, but I do resent that I was made to pay back what would have been a given entitlement if only I’d been willing to be dirt-poor and get much worse results, most likely. It was a rort of students.
And in addition to Fine’s comments – there’s also students like me who only qualified for Austudy after going through a pretty harrowing process to prove ‘extreme family breakdown’ – ie I had to get out of a home with a violent father and everything else falling apart. I still remember vividly standing in the Austudy office, handing over my psychological evaluation over the counter, and the guy reading it on the spot in front of the other clients and telling me in a loud voice ‘nah you wouldn’t qualify, not enough here’ – I had to point out there were two more pages, and that was luckily enough for him to actually get me a proper interview. It made me wonder how many other unfortunates who didn’t have the wherewithal to challenge such a bastard would go away and as a result, probably miss out on uni.
So the difficulty in accessing decent financial support doesn’t just effect the poor, but also those trying to get out of family crises, who are most likely still to be assessed on their parent’s income, regardless of whether they actually have any access to it.
I think Ross’ article aggregates the student population unfairly. Sure, plenty of students are “middle class” (or at least their parents are, given that the average student’s income is pretty low) – but a significant proportion are from lower socio-economic backgrounds and really struggle with the demands of combining full-time study and part-time work. Students also face significant cost of living pressures, especially housing for those that don’t live at home.
Ben – check your email (gmail).
Strange goings on are afoot.
And the solution is to pay the middle class kids more so they don’t have to work?
Gittins forgets to mentions those students who are living out of home but still dont get youth allowance because their parents earn to much. Personally I’m changing university to do honours this year and have to move. I will fall just short of earning the money necessary to count as independent under youth allowance. I know I’m going to earn more money than the average person in my lifetime but that doesnt do a hell of a lot to help me now!
Christ, what a whinge-a-thon.
You lot need to HTFU.
“I do resent that I was made to pay back what would have been a given entitlement if only I’d been willing to be dirt-poor and get much worse results, most likely.”
Well, that problem is easily solved. Make people pay back their HECS debt regardless of whether they are unemployed or investment bankers.
“Students also face significant cost of living pressures, especially housing for those that don’t live at home.”
True, but that’s always been true. Just out of interest, how many students who “face significant cost pressures” are forking out $60 per month or more for that necessity of life, a mobile phone? Etc
Leon @ 9: “And the solution is to pay the middle class kids more so they don’t have to work?”
No, the solution is to have a proper full workload at university and pay people to study for only two years instead of the idiotic system now where students have to study for 4 years and work 25-30 hours per week. What a waste of bloody time!!! Just so Macca’s and Woolies can have cheap workers.
Everyone is complaining about a lack of teachers, nurses and so on, well change the bloody system to help them learn faster and in a more focused manner without having to continually stress about bills and their quality of life.
Spiros @ 11: “Christ, what a whinge-a-thon. You lot need to HTFU.”
I’m already hardened by my experiences, thanks, which is why I am a Marxist. The shittier the experience of being a ’student’ gets, the more anger at the nonsense captialist-friendly systems will be produced. I think this is the only good thing about the situation.
Erm, my study load would have been unmanageable squashed into 2 years even if I didn’t have to work. I may have some beefs with exactly what I was learning, but rest assured there was plenty of it.
I don’t know what some of you think us recent grads did with our time…
All that said, I didn’t mind having to work. In fact, I felt more productive and free when employed, even doing nightfill
. There just needs to be a better balance between work and study, and it needs to be easier to access the financial support you need so set out on your own for the first time while still studying fulltime.
I was trapped at home for a couple of years, travelling 2-3 hours a day on top of night-time shift work, before I gave up and went part-time in order to crack Centrelink’s income threshold for independence. It was maddening, and I’d have been out and free and paying my taxes like a good little citizen far sooner without that hurdle to jump.
Spiros, if you’d read my posts a little more attentively, you’d note that I wasn’t commenting on or complaining about HECS – I think overall HECS (at least when I was involved with it) was a fair scheme and I never have resented paying it back. the just under $11,000 I paid for a full degree plus honours was a reasonable and equitable ask.
What I was commenting on was the old scheme where if you ‘traded in’ your Austudy allowance for a matching amount to double it, you had to pay back the entitlement portion of that as well. Why this was seen as reasonable, I’m not sure. If I’d simply borrowed the same amount as my Austudy allowance (let’s call it $7k a year) and paid it back at even an interest rate slightly above the normal adjustment for inflation, the gov’t still would have made some money back on my loan, but I would never have owed the ridiculous sum of $42,000 – it would have been about $24k + (including interest). Why in the long term it was thought to be a good idea to basically have ex=students owing so much that it stopped them doing much more useful things economically, like saving to get into their first house etc. is beyond me, and it was not a particularly fair arrangement. It’s one thing to pay for a service, it’s another to be made to pay for what would have been freely yours to get to the service. I had little choice, but was lucky enough to pay it off in a mere 15 years.
re Ben @ 7
Exactly – and isn’t the whole point a social mobility one? As the economists say, we want to get the incentives right – so putting up financial barriers to people entering the kinds of careers they’re best suited to seems counterproductive (or ‘inefficient’ if you prefer)
Like pretty much everyone I studied with, I worked through uni. Because I lived at home as an undergrad and fairly close to campus I worked limited hours during semester and was able to turn work down if it was going to make study too difficult. So I was fine. I wasn’t rolling in cash, but I ate well and had somewhere safe to stay and I got the books and so on that I needed. As a postgrad I have moved house 5 times in five years, plus a few months on a friends couch, I had caring responsibilities, I had bills, and I had more regular work. It’s been hard, but I still had support from family and a partner and I managed.
BUT, I am not the only sort of kid who goes (or more to the point, wants to go) to uni. Some of the kids who want to go to uni don’t bother applying in the first place because they don’t know what they would live on, because they know they only have the capacity to study, not to work for money as well (due to illness or disability or caring responsibilities). Some of the kids who’d like to go to uni drop out because they run out of cash, or living at home becomes impossible, or they discover that not owning their own computer and having a quiet spot to use it makes enrollment at uni pointless. The fact that most uni students come from comfortable families is merely an indicator that our society has failed to educate and support all the other kids, not that it’s ok to charge uni students more.
And Spiros, a mobile is pretty much essential when you’re applying for casual work, employers wont give you a job if they can’t contact you, and no, they wont ring a landline and leave a message.
This article shat me off enough to comment on the SMH. Gittins constructs a lovely straw man – that vast cohort of students viciously complaining about HECS.
WTF?! I have never heard anyone complain about HECS, either at univsersity, or in the five years since. What he chooses to ignore are the large number of students for whom living at whom is not an option (like myself, coming from the country), or whose parents are a few of the unlucky baby boomers not sitting on a mountain of equity/wealth in one form or another, or otherwise unprepared/unable to support their kids.
It shits me no end. I worked six or seven days a week, in one, two and for a very brief, hellish, period three jobs, every year of my degree. It still wasn’t enough to live off – my parents’ incomes were considered too much for the odious Youth Allowance (wealthy primary school teacher, and part-time medical receptionist. Gold mine vocations, both. Esp for four kids.).
Nonetheless dad gave me $100 a week, and it was vital for getting me through uni. No way could I have made it without that cash.
And Ross, who
a) got his education for free
b) at a time when few people went to uni and qualifications really meant something because of that, with commensurate earnings.
c) Once graduated could afford to buy a house relatively soon after commencing work.
Has the fucking hide to chastise me for resenting that fact I couldn’t afford a pair of shoes, or enough undies, or the crapload of stuff I now take for granted when I was student.
How many jobs did Ross hold done when he was studying? Selfish bastard.
Shorter Spiros: I’m with Paul Keating – get a job.
I’m also not persuaded that a 2 year system would be ideal – as a tertiary teacher, for me one of the greatest losses (and I can think of others) of the need for students to be in paid work to a much greater degree and for much longer hours than was once the case is the lack of any time to read, explore and learn. The whole constellation of causes encourages and complements the rationalisation of education as job training and concentrating on assessment at the expense of everything else.
I think Gitten’s point is that you trade off four years of poverty for a significant financial benefit. One parallel is guest workers – they trade a few years servitude in Australia for a sizeable amount of money back in their home country. Sure, they generally get treated badly here and some of them die, but the ones who make it back are significantly better off than their compatriots who stay home.
In both cases there are things that the govt could do to make the system nicer. But right now there are a lot of people who think the system as it is right now is worth while.
Homo economicus in action – people’s revealed preferences are for what we have now.
I’m with Spiros on this one – the number of whinging yuppie kids I had to put up with while working 25 hours a week when I was a full time student. And the people I worked with were just like me, except most of them didn’t get the opportunity for a tertiary education. They’re the ones deserving of sympathy, not uni students.
I got sympathy for lots of social groups – uni students do not of themselves fall into this category.
Polyquats @ 5 – Isn’t HECS debt still only increased by the CPI each years? So no matter how long if its before you pay it off, its still not increasing in real terms.
As far as loans go its an excellent deal – I’d love to be able to borrow money to buy a house on those terms
glen @ 12 – if you do an engineering degree then you most likely already
have 30-35 contact hours. By the time you add in time for assignments, report write-ups etc its well over 40 hours a week (and they wonder why engineers generally don’t get involved in student politics!). One great aspect of engineering degrees was the acceptance of employers providing work experience and actually paying the students decent salaries. 3 months of full time work over the Christmas breaks meant I didn’t have to work during the rest of the year.
patrickg @ 17 – I guess you weren’t around at uni in the 90s when there were quite regular student protests against HECS. Perhaps its just been accepted as ok now by the students.
I do think there really needs to be a HECS like scheme for living costs for students. HECS has been pretty unsuccessful at changing the demographics of those who attend university and some more help with immediate living costs should help.
“And Ross, who
a) got his education for free”
Very unlikely. Gittins is old enough to have been a uni pre Whitlam, when people had to pay, and there was no HECS.
Glen, I gathered you are a Marxist by your use of the terms “structural position of students” and “surplus labour”. (I looked in vain for “falling rate of profit”.) Nothing wrong with that of course, though all the Marxists I’ve known were as far from being whingers as it’s possible for people to be.
“no, they wont ring a landline and leave a message.”
On that one, I call bullshit.
Sorry boys and girls, but the more posts I read, the more convinced I am that Gittins is right. There’s a lot of serious deprivation and unfairness in society, and the temporary discomfort of students just doesn’t rate, notwithstanding some no doubt genuine hardship cases.
Here’s from free advice: get on with your studies and get on with your prospective careers as bankers, scientists, social workers, whatever. You’ll look back on your time as a student as the best years of your life.
The first time I went to Uni I wasn’t able to get Austudy because my parents earned too much and I didn’t pass the independence test. My parents made me pay board. I worked up to three different casual jobs. Fortunately there are so many uni holidays that you can earn heaps then to help with the Guild Fees and books at the start of the year. Never got to do the post-uni europe thing – couldn’t afford it.
The second time I went to uni I was working full-time. Not having kids and having a flexible working situation I was able to take on a full-time study load and work full-time. I used to just laugh at the kids who hadn’t done their tut prep or hand in assignments on time.
Its no joke, Spiros, mobiles aren’t a luxury. Bosses want instant contactability, whether you’re a student or not, as do fellow students, friends, and family. Mobiles are also a lot more cost-effective and hassle-free when you live in a sharehouse. I absolutely fail to see how not having had my $35 a month contract could possibly have helped my economic situation. If you want to pick on unjustified student expenses, you could always hang shit on me for having a gym membership in my final year of study.
Mind you, I could only afford that because the student union was no longer helping itself to my savings
On that one, I call bullshit.
Well you’d be completely wrong. Job network providers advise people to get a mobile as a matter of course to increase their chances of employment. On top of that most uni students do casual work, which means the boss’s expecation is as others have said, instant contactability to organise shifts.
But what happens if you come from a poor family who can’t support you financially?
.
Or in the event of parents who can but won’t because they disapprove of your choice of course?
.
Doesn’t Austudy offer some kind of HECS type thing were you can get paid more if you pay it back?
Spiros – Just out of interest, how many students who “face significant cost pressures” are forking out $60 per month or more for that necessity of life, a mobile phone? Etc
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Good point.
.
Mobile phones aren’t necessary but what is necessary are drugs. Mobile phones can come in handy if you want be entrepreneurial in furtherance of of obtaning the necessary drugs.
Kate:
This is a great argument for better supporting carers, truly poor families, and the disabled. It’s no argument for helping uni students in general, who mostly have rich parents and will themselves be rich parents.
Ahh … “we” — the government — are not “charging” uni students, we’re paying them. And yes: because most of them are from comfortable families, we should be paying them less/”charging them more”. They can pay for themselves.
Your first point is good: we should be better supporting the least fortunate. Unless funds are unlimited, this implies we should support the most fortunate less.
glen:
So you do want to pay them more.
As it is, middle class students students are forced to experience unskilled work before they enter secure jobs as teachers or nurses, or — we seem to be forgetting — doctors, lawyers, accountants, and stockbrokers. It seems quite tortured to read this as class exploitation (“used to control the casualised service industry workplace”? Controlled by whom? Evidence?), and bizarre to prefer a system which gives rich kids an easier ride.
A HECS scheme to cover living expenses while studying is definitely a good idea, but ideally it should allow individuals to decide (within reason) how much they need. If I wanted to stop work today in order to complete sufficient training to take me into a new career, just in order to be able continue paying the mortgage etc., I’d need quite a sizeable loan, but I’d be pretty comfortable with this.
As it is now, I don’t know where I’d be able to get such a loan, and hence I’m not likely to change careers any time soon, even though I would potentially become far more productive by doing so.
myriad @ 25 – that may be true, though if you limit yourself to only necessary calls and get a prepaid plan it should be very cheap since you only really need it to receive calls.
Sure it was an irritating article.
It is kinda missing the point. Australian universities don’t deliver degrees to individuals so that they can earn more money.
The customer is the people of Australia (for most places) and having students that need to be distracted from their studies is a negative. What the customer should be demanding is a circumstance that allows them the greatest return, rather then sub standard goods.
In some ways I’d prefer a performance based scholarship/remuneration scheme: get straight HD’s and you’ll be better then fine. Get a Pass average and you’ll need to suplement.
Maybe we need greater demands on return for money. Better scientists, doctors, lawyers, historians…. which is what is being paid for in the first place. If servicing the service industry is the primary goal then something is seriously wrong.
Adopt as your fundamental creed that you will equip yourself for life, not solely for your own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole community. Sir John Monash
I could only support a HECS scheme for living expenses if it had much lower threshholds for repayment than HECS does. You can get a degree and move overseas and never pay HECS back. They don’t go after your estate for the debt either.
I should probably add the caveat that I do work at a Uni.
The number of students so incredibly delighted to no longer need to work at safeway or subway due to having finished is palpable and kind of tragic.
Especially since with the economic downturn there isn’t a whole lot of “summer jobs” this year.
leon @ 28: “So you do want to pay them more.”
WTF?
Who is getting ‘paid’? Aren’t you assuming students receive money that isn’t based on wage labour?
Many student do not get any money from the government.
I worked my way through my undergrad by working graveyard shifts halfway into third year, then I moved back home and switched to working weekends. I didn’t want money from the government. I only took money from the government when I got a PhD scholarship.
Shouldn’t the real concern be ‘costs’? How much does it ‘cost’ to retard a university student’s education — and here I am primarily talking about vocational degrees — by two years? I am assuming it would be more than the cost of paying them for two years to study and then getting them out into the workforce two years earlier.
I understand other university degrees take longer, such as science, engineering and humanities, and are impractical to be reduced to shorter time frames.
Razor – “You can get a degree and move overseas and never pay HECS back”
True, but many of the countries you’re likely to move to are ones that fully subsidise tertiary education, and so suffer the same problem. Along as Australia is a relatively attractive place to move to, it’s likely to be a net beneficiary of that phenomenon.
The U.S. is probably the biggest beneficiary here, being the destination for a very large number of immigrants educated courtesy of taxpayers in their countries of birth.
So Spiros, you’re saying that as long as suffering is temporary, and dealt with only by a minority, it’s fine?
Crikey man, I wouldn’t want to be living in your world.
Dubious argument, Leon. Firstly, who’s arguing every student needs the same level of support? and who says that most students have rich parents? I would love to see a cite for that.
And finally, when should do people start getting treated as independent adults? You can vote, drink, gamble, and go to the slammer at 18, and yet for some reason when it comes to welfare, 18 does not an adult make it. You are considered your parent’s child until you don’t need welfare, effectively.
The arugment that Youth Allowance cut-offs improve equality is a joke. All the ‘rich kids’ I knew were able to be “employed” (not really) by their parent’s companies, given the 12 or 18k or whatever was to become independent, and then jumped right onto full youth allowance, in some cases giving the money back, in other cases buying a car with it, etc. Real equal.
That article was totally infuriating. If the whining straw student Gittins constructed actually existed in significant numbers, then maybe he’d be worth listening to, but like others I’ve never heard actual current students complaining about hecs / help. Their problems are far more immediate (and yes they do have real financial problems at this very un-middle-class university.)
Comparing my own experience with undergrads now I think Glen is totally right and casualisation of the low-skilled workforce is a big factor in student poverty, instability, consumer debt, not to mention a significant factor in individual fails, uneven grades, and the general massive uni dropout rate.
When I first went to university my parents could not give me any help so I was dependent on Austudy, at $110 a week, and $55 of this went on a shared house room with no window. For the first year I ate most of my dinners in the vegetarian soup kitchen run by the Seventh Day Adventists down the road. I failed a lot of subjects and failed to make progress generally until I got a real permanent part-time job with regular long shifts – Friday afternoon and evening, all day Saturday and Sunday and old-time penalty rates, and I kept this job for almost ten years, and its regularity and continuity made my university study possible.
Jobs like that don’t seem to be available to students now. They come to campus for two hours, go off and do a three hour shift, come back for another two hours, go to work again (in a different job) for another three hour shift, all the work is casual and thus could dry up at any time; they feel they can’t say no to unexpected call-ins on days that clash with their classes (one first year student was fired from Off*c*w*rks for requesting a change to her roster when semester began).
When a student fails a unit because she’s missed too many classes from issues arising from her irregular and low paid casual job it’s a massive waste of public money; I’d have thought an economist like Gittins would be capable of factoring that sort of thing into the equation.
patrickg, if you are really suffering, I’ll send you some moussaka.
Not money, no. But their study is being subsidised by the government.
How much does it cost whom? The government? The student? Society? Shortening vocational degrees by two years and having students study full time: society gains because students have two extra years of full time qualified work; it loses because the students have lost four years of part-time unqualified work; it might gain a little because the course is shorter and government has to pay less to qualify each student; it loses because government is subsidising students’ living expenses; and it loses because there’s a net transfer of wealth to the wealthy, who need the money less (or might be willing to pay their children’s living expenses in the absence of a government wage).
Perhaps targeting assistance to poor students would be good, but on the whole, I think the costs of paid full-time study outweigh the benefits.
No argument there Chris (ADO) – although I would like to think that we’d let students perhaps run a mobile phone and actually *gasp* make calls as well as merely receive.
Also as someone else pointed out up-thread, it’s now pretty much accepted in share houses that people have a mobile instead of trying to have to fight over the landline, which also makes sense.
That being said, you can run a pre-paid mobile for about $30 month.
Razor,
I could only support a HECS scheme for living expenses if it had much lower threshholds for repayment than HECS does. You can get a degree and move overseas and never pay HECS back. They don’t go after your estate for the debt either.
well wouldn’t a better solution be to ensure that even if you move O/S you have to pay whatever back? I’ve got (mainly lawyer) friends who went overseas and made squillions, but at least they a) came back and b) paid off their HECS. It should be compulsory to pay it back, no matter where you go.
Anyways, I think you can separate out two issues there, and deal with them separately.
“When I first went to university my parents could not give me any help so I was dependent on Austudy, at $110 a week, and $55 of this went on a shared house room with no window.”
So was I, except the rate had risen to about $120, so I gather you probably did your degree in the late 80s when there were jobs around, unlike when I did mine. Personally, I was really poor but had no problem living on that amount (excluding the usual hassles of having so little money — eating curried frozen pees when you run out of food etc. Quite fun life experiences in hindsight). I also had a decent share house in Hawthorn with a couple of other students, which I seem to remember cost me around $60 per week, so perhaps you should have looked harder.
In any case, I’m with Spiros, no doubt there are some students in hardship, but there are lots of whingers also, like people here — why get a $35 per month plan when you get a DODO $15 prepay and use it until runs out? You don’t pay anything for taking calls either, so your employers can talk to use as much as they want. If people don’t realize what good value HECS and all the other subsidizies are, then perhaps they arn’t smart enough to go to uni anyway.
dk:
But it’s equally counterproductive/inefficient to have too many incentives for people to enter the kinds of careers they’re best suited to. There’s no point in lowering financial barriers to university courses (i.e., shifting the financial burden to the public) if students are willing to pay their own way and capable of doing so. In other words, as with private vs. public schools, it’s efficient to help out really poor students a lot, to not help wealthy students at all, and to help slightly poor students a little. Most students have families that are richer than average and/or will themselves be richer than average. So it’s inefficient to help most students.
myriad @ 40 – what they want to make calls too!!
I can understand the convenience in share houses, but calls from mobiles are just so much more expensive. Though I don’t want to take away from the fact that there are students out there doing it very tough – even when I went through uni there were people collecting cans from rubbish bins in their spare time to supplement their income. And some people whilst very intelligent, simply don’t have the social skills to get those part time jobs in the retail industry.
I’d still suggest though that those students who have the $60/month mobile phone plans are not the ones we really need to help. Higher payments for those really in need, and HECS like facilities for the rest would be a big improvement.
“If people don’t realize what good value HECS and all the other subsidizies are,”
Again with the strawman, who’s arguing that, Conrad?
Also, slighty personally, can I ask what your parent’s income was? Cause mine would have been <$80k combined and that wasn’t low enough to qualify me. (late nineties, early 2000’s). You may find you wouldn’t even qualify for welfare now.
I don’t think we need to argue the minutiae of a person’s spending habits to agree on what’s possible and what’s not – it’s degrading enough when centrelink do it. Welfare is a right, not a privilege, and if that grates then move to frigging Panama or even the US and see how fun it is, and how many poor people you see in uni.
Current payments are nearly $100 below the poverty line [ source ]. That’s crazy low. Whether anyone can ‘get by’ on this money is not really the question – there’s no argument that these payments are hardly luxurious – the question is what how differently we should treat someone because they are not working in the same way the majority of people do.
It’s a bit Three Yorkshiremen – “no one did as tough, and was as tough, as me, you’re all bloody whingers”. I’m not particularly interested in who’s doing it toughest, or whether you can live without more than one blanket, or only on rice crispies or whatever. It’s not a competition to be brokest.
To be honest, I’ve found some of the attitudes expressed here and at Gittin’s SMH piece to be very typical of attitudes towards the young – across a whole range of issues, not the welfare.
The implication is that sub-adults should have sub-adult rights. This is very clear in the ‘it’s just a phase, get over it’ themes. It’s also a very common attitude in regards to a whole host of youth issues, including harrassment, depression, uniforms, etc. etc.
It ignores the reality of the situation – however unpleasant – simply because it is temporary. It’s a very disempowering thing for the people involved – especially when society at large is so determined to define you by the same category they revile. So you can’t be a person, first and foremost, you are a student, a high schooler, a temp worker, whatever.
well sure Chris (ADO), but as patrickg says better than I can above, it’s particularly stupid for a nation that says it wants to be ‘clever’ to set up a Yorkshiremen-esque system for subsidising students to get through university, that essentially sets too many up to fail.
I’d also point out that a lot of the argument here can be basically boiled down to “this is middle class kids whining” – to which I’d say, well if the middle class kids can’t survive it in pretty decent shape and get a good education so that we have a better economy (apparently the only valid point for an education these days), what freakin’ hope do the disadvantaged or ‘just poorer parents’ kids have? And those tempted can spare me the whole ‘poorer kids are more streetwise and better at surviving on chump change than soft white middle class kids’ schtick, ’cause it’s bull.
I want us to have a higher education system that levels the playing field and is open to as many as possible, regardless of background. Personally I’d favour seeing students commit to doing a year’s worth (ie spread out) of volunteer work or similar in return for a decently subsidised living standard / living funds, as opposed to a means test, which always leaves way to many on the margins missing out. If the argument is we want those nasty teens to value what they’re getting and they won’t unless they pay for it, well there are plenty of ways to build in a return to society that don”t mean leaving in place a system that essentially denies tertiary education to most.
1. As a uni lecturer in the 1990s my experience was about 1 in 30 post grad students would be couch surfing, the trick was to identify them and present accommodation solutions before week 10 when it would really start to impact their studies. Not an easy task before the formation of UniLodge etc
2. HECS is a good deal but about a third of Australian students and all overseas students have to pay their tuition up front
3. poverty means that students have no insulation from set backs, thus their study performance is impacted. These days students must attend 80% of lectures or they fail
4. students from really poor families can get Austudy and students from really rich families can organise things so that they earn more than $18000 in their GAP year working for a family friend. Students from middle incoem families who have to live away from home fall through the crack
5. In the 1970s student teachers and student nurses were paid to study and teachers were guaranteed a job when they finished, actually they were bonded to the Education Dept for 3 years. Today nurses and teachers finish university and have to hunt for a job. Many graduates have to work in part time jobs until they build up enough experience to get a full time job, in some years like 1992, 2009 this might be 90% of graduates
6. students have more up front costs now than they had in the 1970s. In the 1970s I used the university library copy of the text, they had 100 copies of the text for 1000 students, today the library copy might be on semester loan to a staff member. Students must have their own computer to study in Australia.
I’m with Spiros.
What a whinge-a-thon.
There seems to be one helluva sense of entitlement, and an abhorrence of paying one’s own way, and a most distinct objection to having to *ugh* work, in a hoi polloi job. *sniff*sob*poor diddums*
HTFU.
Speaking as a country parent who supported a full time uni student for 4 years, I can tell Spiros et al that it’s no picnic.
My daughter lived in a share house in North Adelaide for which we paid $50/week rent. Share accommodation near the campus was non-existent and so financially out of the question.
To get to the campus, she had to catch 2 buses and often had late lectures which at times meant waiting for up to 11/2 hours after dark to get a bus into the city and then another wait of up to 1 hour to catch the next bus home. This was out of the question for safety reasons alone, so we provided her with a car for our peace of mind.
Initially there was a landline at the house but by mutual agreement among the house mates it was dispensed with. This meant nobody had to have the phone in their name and then have to squeeze the money out of house mates when the bill arrived. Plus it was a far more expensive option than a mobile.
That decision certainly didn’t break my heart. Because the phone account was in my daughter’s name, I had to fork out for overdue bills and on occasion, reconnection, when people didn’t pay their share. A $40/month pre-paid was a much better investment than $60-$70/month landline.
Having to support 2 households was a huge financial strain on us but we believed it was worth the sacrifice so that she could concentrate on her studies without having to work in crappy, low paid casual jobs in the hospitality and fast food industries.
… Jane, why exactly couldn’t your daughter attend Adelaide Uni or UniSA, both of which are within walking distance of North Adelaide?
With that remark about “crappy, low paid casual jobs”, Jane, like many other commenters here, exhibits what SATP described perfectly as “one helluva sense of entitlement”.
Glen also has this in spades. It’s ironic that, as a self-described “Marxist”, he is essentially making a claim for class privilege. Not class in terms of birth or inherited wealth, but class in terms of intellectual endowment.
If you are born into the class of smart people, in Glen’s brave new world you should never have to get your hands dirty, and never do jobs that are beneath you. Someone else will do those. Migrants perhaps, or people on the dole. But not Alpha-Plus guys like Glen.
Oh, and what’s with the strange idea of 2 year degrees? Everyone drinks and parties and lets their hair down in their first year out of high school – even the brightest students (often the brightest most of all, since they’ve been flogging themselves silly to get that stellar year 12 score).
First year uni is often a complete write-off; the sensible ones at least use it to discover which disciplines they like, and start studying more seriously in second year. So Glen’s concept would have to compress almost everything into second year. No way, dude, it wouldn’t work – not for any course.
There are a few things here, many of them conflicting.
1. Glen’s point that people are being encouraged to attend university in order to finesse unemployment statistics is a fair one. This is even more the case with forcing the not very able to finish high school. Can’t have them bulking up the dole figures, can we?
2. The point made by various people that university students are overwhelmingly middle class is also a fair one. I suspect that being middle class and having to serve others – particularly others who are likely to be lower on the economic totem pole than oneself in time – is likely to be a good thing.
3. Treating clever people nicely tends to produce good economic returns. Obviously, the focus needs to be on the very clever, not just the moderately clever, and both governments and private concerns who, say, provide scholarships are entitled to expect bang for their buck. As it stands, there are probably too many people attending university. It’s better to be in the top decile as an electrician rather than the middle two quartiles as an engineer, but we are busily sending young people with a talent for playing with wires off to be engineers without considering alternatives.
These things pull in different directions, I suspect, but are worth bearing in mind.
Say what, skepticlawyer? There are all sorts of forces behind the ever-increasing momentum for people to attend uni, without needing to invoke some sort of X-files governmental conspiracy to “finesse unemployment statistics”.
a) High schools love to get their charges into uni (for one thing, it is a tangible measure of the success of the school).
b) The unis themselves want as many enrolments as possible, to maximise the $ they receive from the government.
c) There’s all sorts of social status factors at work.
d) Not to mention the movies. Animal House and every US college movie since has portrayed uni as the only place for any fun-loving teen to be. (Ah, if only the reality lived up to that.)
I do agree with your points 2 and 3 though.
“Also, slighty personally, can I ask what your parent’s income was”
Since I can hardly remember what one of them looks like, it’s pretty hard for me to answer that question! However, since I wasn’t privvy to their money, it doesn’t make much difference.
“Current payments are nearly $100 below the poverty line”
Big deal. The unemployment rate these days is 4%. If it goes up to 10% again, I’ll have more sympathy. How much do you think you need to live off a week? $280? That’s less than 20 hours a week work even if you got no subsidies at all (let alone if you live with your parents, as many students do). That would be fine for most courses.
Paulus @ 49: “Glen also has this in spades. It’s ironic that, as a self-described “Marxist”, he is essentially making a claim for class privilege. Not class in terms of birth or inherited wealth, but class in terms of intellectual endowment.
If you are born into the class of smart people, in Glen’s brave new world you should never have to get your hands dirty, and never do jobs that are beneath you. Someone else will do those. Migrants perhaps, or people on the dole. But not Alpha-Plus guys like Glen.”
ARE YOU BLIND!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?
I worked graveyard shifts at a servo rather than take money from the government because I knew I was capable of working in whatever capacity to fund myself through most of my university studies. Prior to that I worked 13 day fortnights, 6 weeks on one week off on a mine construction site as a TA. Now I am working as a staff writer at a magazine because I don’t want to add to the spurplus labour of casual academics. “Born into the class of smart people”? FFS, my mum went to teacher’s college because she got paid, she came from the single parent household and was old school poor. Before you make offensive assumptions about how much work someone does or their class background I suggest you take your head out of your arse.
I am making an argument about the control of the casualised service-based industry. It is controlled through the surplus labour provided year in year out by needy university students. Tell me I am wrong, Paulus, SatP, or whoever. I don’t have any time for bullshit postering.
Whether or not you think university students’ pain is overstated, I really would take issue with Gittins’ comparison of HECS fees with a car loan: “for students graduating last year, their average total fee was $20,500. That’s less than you’d borrow to buy a car.”
He tried this one on a few years ago, as I remember, and I think from memory the figure then was about $35,000. A family sedan as compared to a Mazda, maybe.
The problem with this line of argument is that
*It feeds into a culture of borrowing for absolutely everything, which is turning out to be highly toxic and may no longer even be possible for much longer as we continue to spend more than we earn.
*It ignores the fact that back when he was young, and also when I was young (he’s a classic baby boomer I think, I’m on the cusp / Generation Joneser), taking out a loan for a new car, or at any rate one costing five figures, was just not on the agenda. Our education costs may not have been so high but no-one of that age bought new cars. We drove the most utter bombs at which the average Hyundai-driving Gen-Y would fall about laughing. I rode my bike all through uni, then bought my first car for $120. None of my peers would have bought a new car until they were well clear of uni.
I’d suggest that a lot of uni students currently couldn’t afford to take out a loan for a new car either, so the analogy is just false. It’s like the people who say that if I just gave up my second car and overseas / QLD holidays I could easily afford private schools. Wha? (Looks about for second car and evidence of holidays, fails to find same.)
*It’s like the nuclear industry argument about “background radiation” – Oh this debt is only equivalent to THAT debt which I think is normal, so it’s OK. This ignores that debt 1 may be OK and debt 2 is equivalent size but they are ADDED TOGETHER, not either/or.
I agree with the comment that people are encouraged to continue in education to massage the unemployment statistics. So you get bored high school students and struggling tertiary students studying courses for which they are not suited or ill-equipped to benefit from i.e. too dumb to work in the field for which they train or a brusque nurse with no bedside manner.
How much does it cost to live? A 3 bedroom inner Melbourne student house expenses average $150 per week then there are transport, food, text book expenses on top of that plus the $1500 for the [mandatory] Toshiba laptop.
Just to touch on the Mobile Phone Thingy again, it is a condition of employment at my workplace – which has a high amount of uni students employed there.
All staff updates are sent via SMS, roster changes, meetings etc. It is simply the most cost effective method for the business to deliver such announcements. As such the company requires it’s staff to have a mobile. Admittedly the business is a telco and offers staff plans to offset this.
The uni I attend also uses mobiles to ease information exchange – results, exam timetables, class changes, deadline changes, etc – either email or SMS notifications, take your pick. Without a phone or a computer you miss them.
Despite what some would like to believe about them, mobile phones are an integral part of urban life in this country. So much so that even telstra – that eternal sloth when it comes to spotting market trends – sells a product to mitigate the effects of a lost of damaged handset via remote backup of your phones ROM.
Yep, it’s interesting people writing that they could pay $50 – $60 per week in a share household. Now you’d be paying at least $150 for your room, at least in Melbourne. The huge increases in rent just in itself makes a difference. The world of dirt cheap share houses which students relied on doesn’t exist any more.
Yes, the house I lived in (early 1990s) was a then-decrepit two-storey terrace fronting onto the Edinburgh Gardens. Emphatically not student housing now.
This isn’t really about whether students have a mobile, or what they spend their money on. When I was undergrad, I spent most of my money on booze (hint – I was not alone), but I earned every cent as a kitchenhand and a waiter. My flatmate couldn’t come to the pub because she couldn’t afford it, but she decided to get high distinctions and not work – her choice.
Perhaps the students who really struggle financially, would be struggling financially whatever they did – carers and the like. But doesn’t this mean that carers should be better supported, not students?
Actually Helen I think its a good example of borrowing for a good reason (educational investment) vs. borrowings you really should avoid if at all practical (getting a car). Infrastructure investment versus splurging it on baby bonuses to buy votes
Wow, are the computing requirements for most courses that high these days? I can understand that might be true for comp sci or perhaps even engineering students (though I kind of doubt it). But a $500 eepc like machine quite adequately does all the standard stuff that people use computers for (short of playing graphics intensive 3D games
I was just about to mention that, Fine. $50/w share housing in Sydney belongs in the same historical category as Bluto and the gang at Delta House—nostalgia for something that never quite existed.
…
Without wanting to buy into the ten-yard fight over who was poorer at uni (I’m not so much picturing the Yorkshiremen as hearing Martin Lawrence and Chris Rock talking about each other’s mums), this whole discussion ignores the increasing dependence of universities on the money that comes through international students.
The idea of people taking out large loans at commercial rates for education isn’t theoretical, it’s what a large fraction of students have had to do for a decade or more—without access to any of the indirect subsidy that domestic students get in the form of concessions and HECS/HELP/PELS, and with the threat of loss of visa rights following course failure.
If the service sector depends on students in the way Glen describes, it’s not dependent on the nice bourgie ones with Australian passports.
I worked an average of 25 hours a week while at uni (full time), and still managed to get first-class honours in economics (and the high-paying job that goes with it), drink myself silly on a regular basis, get arressted at protests, go to Europe on exchange, go to the gym three or four times a week and still find time to be really, really ridiculously good-looking.
Just sayin’.
Any student studying at university needs their own computer, the universities expect all assignments to be word processed, more research is done online rather than by reading text books, you can read electronic copies of journal articles online, there are very few computer laboratories open 24 hours a day, even at the business [back] end of the semester, these labs might have 30 computers available for a student body of 3,000. If they are overseas students the sweetener is that they can talk to home for hours on end using SKYPE.
So gone are the days of students living out of their panel vans, unless they trail a power cord to recharge the computer and mobile phone.
In my mind there are 4 issues here, that Gittins doesn’t really consider:
1) As others have mentioned, students by and large don’t care about HECS. The issue is living expenses.
2) Different degrees require different amounts of contact hours, and it’s hard to generalise. My degree had an average of 12 hours a week, and I can’t complain too much. But other degrees – science or medicine, for example – have quite significantly larger contact hours. It’s much less realistic for people in medicine or veterinarian science to get a part-time job.
3) In a lot of courses at uni, apart from marketing, perhaps, you actually want people to learn things. Do you want a doctor who skipped the lecture on treatment of STDs, for example, because they had to work that day? Of course, if a uni degree is basically a status symbol/certificate and little else (and the lower standards get, the more this will be the case), I suppose this doesn’t matter so much.
4) There are numerous pressures on academics to dumb things down, and students having to work enough so that they can live is a big one. This is not only because students complain about the workload, but also because having a significant proportion of students putting a lot of their energy into casual work when they should be studying is going to change the distribution of marks; I suspect that it’s reasonably common that students with a minimal grasp of the subject end up passing because they get bell-curved up.
“Now you’d be paying at least $150 for your room, at least in Melbourne.”
“plus the $1500 for the [mandatory] Toshiba laptop”
I think all this thread is doing is confirming my stereotype that many students these days have far higher expectations about where they can live, what kind of work they will have to do etc. A two minutes search for 3 bedroom places around Melbourne on realestate.com turns up hundreds of matches for places less than $150 per room, and my own laptop cost around $1000.
Jobs are definitely harder and harder to find nowadays. I know that just a month ago, companies weren’t even accepting applications because of the economy being so slow. Now that the holiday season is here, more companies should be accepting applications and hiring for extra help, which is a good thing for students who need to pay for college. Another option to finding a job at a retail store is for students to start their own entrepreneurial experience.
I worked for Vector Marketing for 2 years while in college. Vector offered me flexible hours, base pay with great commission, opportunity to work in my hometown or away at school, opportunity for advancement before graduation, and career opportunities after graduation. As a Vector employee, I learned and built my communication skills, leadership abilities, goal setting and following a plan to accomplish them, and interpersonal skills. Mastering these traits helped me as a student (while in college), as well as in my current job; so not only did Vector help me financially as a student but also personally and professionally.
This option may be more helpful to students’ financial situation because even if they were to get hired at a retail store, stores are cutting back on hours and labor because of the slow economy, which leads to less money for students. Although a job at Vector may not ultimately be for everyone, knowing what is out there is great for students to know. By hearing about different job opportunities, students know their options and have more chances of landing their next job to pay for their college tuition and expenses.
Spot on Tim Byron.
There is always the option financing uni by first working and saving for a few years.
Krista @ 66: the organisation you are spruiking, I suppose, took its name from
“Vector”, (sociology) a person or entity that passes along an urban legend or other meme from the concept of biological vector
but I prefer
“Vector”, (epidemiology) a carrier of a disease-causing agent
Which is a good description of someone using a discussion thread on a political blog for corporate marketing.
“However, since I wasn’t privvy to their money, it doesn’t make much difference.”
This is what I’m saying, Conrad. Doesn’t matter whether you get the money or not, unless you have a psychologist assessment, the amount they earn will affect the welfare you qualify for.
Yes $280 a week would be grand, but that’s more than twenty hours on a minor’s wage. I wasn’t earning $18 an hour until I was twenty, and that was at the beneficence of an employer, rather than any legal obligation.
Bloody hell, has it really been so long that you’ve forgotten these things? Also, that poverty line hasn’t been pulled out of thin air dude.
I see despite my early comment, it’s still a competition to see who did it toughest, and just how litle money you need to survive. What’s particularly fascinating to me is how everyone is convinced that they did it tough, worked really hard etc. and everyone else was/is a bludging whinger. Of course, if everyone says this…
And I also love how quick the acknowledgement is that, yes, some students are actually doing it really tough, and in principle they should be helped.
But of course, we can tell those poor students by the big “P”’s on their heads, it will be really easy to separate those poor students from the whingers. We’ve done such a stellar job so far!
Oh, lots of students live at home, so they don’t need lots of money! Do you know how much “living away from home” allowance I qualified for (and don’t get me started on the hoops you have to jump through – and continue to jump through, to get it). $23.50 a week. Yep. That’s the huge difference that I was able to get vs living at home.
People seem to think the difference between getting by at uni and being a bludgey scumbag is that students want to all be able to simply get by without any kind of work at all, and frankly this is just untrue. With a few, very wealthy exceptions, everyone I know had a job at university, and no one begrudged that.
However, it’s having to have multiple jobs, working for $15 an hour (tops) or less, not being able to take time off, ever (I got fired from Video Ezy for asking for a weekend off, six weeks in advance, for my grandmother’s 80th birthday), and still just scraping by that people find tough.
And then, people have the temerity to accuse you of being lazy. Not working hard enough, buying unnecessary things. Even now, there is little outcry about the welfare that full-time adults receive. Whether they really deserve the baby bonus, first home owners grants, etc. Not too many full-time adults get criticised for going into debt for that Commodore, or whether they really _need_ a flat screen tv, or even that mortgage.
But if you’re a student a mobile phone is luxury. Being able to afford a balanced diet, or enough clothes, likewise. Wtf!
Glen,
No, I am not blind. I did register that you had worked at a servo for several years to fund your studies.
However, you seemed to be claiming that this was wrong, that this was exploitation, that you and other students should not have to provide the “bullshit labour that is required for the service-based economy to function” (your words).
In other words, you were saying that anyone bright enough to get into uni should not have to sully themselves with casual work that they feel is beneath them, because the government should fully fund them (at least for 2 years).
If that is a mis-characterisation of your argument I apologise, but your meaning did seem clear enough.
“‘Born into the class of smart people’? FFS, my mum went to teacher’s college because she got paid, she came from the single parent household and was old school poor …”
If you want to get into the concept of class, you should realise that it is not solely about money. Go back to say, 18th century England, and you had middle and even upper-class people who were quite poor. The novels of the era obsess about the disconnect between money and class.
What your proposal would do is effectively create a modern-day ’smart people’ class, reminiscent of the intelligence-based class structure in Aldous Huxley’s great novel ‘Brave New World’. In Huxley’s imagined future society, the brightest people — called ‘Alpha-Plus’ — automatically had appropriate jobs given to them, and never ever had to do menial or boring work.
One question for you, Glen. If it is a bad thing that students provide the “bullshit labour that is required for the service-based economy to function”, then the logical consequence is either:
a) Someone else should provide that “bullshit labour”. If so, who? Or …
b) The service-based economy should basically shut down. That would not be appreciated by those of us who enjoy a good latte. I’m off to get one now!
I have to admit I was one of the lucky ones who never really had to work at uni, being comfortably supported by both (separated) parents. And when I did find myself a job towards the end of my degree it paid very decently and work was basically available whenever I wanted it. So I guess what strikes me when I read stories here of other students with very different experiences is the sheer injustice of it: there’s absolutely nothing I did to deserve being able to coast through uni while others have obviously had to beg borrow and steal just to get by. Further it almost certainly would have been beneficial for me if I had had to do it at least a little bit tougher, and better appreciate just how fortunate I have been since then. Knowing what I do now, I’d've been happy to give up a little of my relative luxury in order to ensure other students were at least sure of being able to afford stable accommodation and a nutritous diet. But I’m not sure how best to institute a scheme to better redistribute income among students, especially when officially I *had* no income.
That is what is tricky about targeting help. Student income is not indicative of need, and neither necessarily is parental income – there’s no guarantee that parents will be willing to help especially when their children may not be studying a course they approve of. Even living away from home is not a good indicator – its pretty difficult to separate those who are supported by parents or those who could live at home but want a bit more independence versus those who really have to leave home.
Patrickg — if money is really such a problem, and if working is really so onerous that you can’t do both at once, you could simply study part time as a fair chunk of the students do where I work — there are very few courses where you can’t do this.
Paulus @ 71: “However, you seemed to be claiming that this was wrong, that this was exploitation, that you and other students should not have to provide the “bullshit labour that is required for the service-based economy to function” (your words).
In other words, you were saying that anyone bright enough to get into uni should not have to sully themselves with casual work that they feel is beneath them, because the government should fully fund them (at least for 2 years).”
On the contrary, I have no problem with the sort of work I do and did then (all matter of glorious jobs, including one that required me to run around all day following a garbage truck around to place tags on bins advertising a bin cleaning company and I actually worked the door of an underground party space in the inner-west towards the end of my PhD. I would be reading Deleuze and then ticking names off a door list lol! I even contemplated playing rugby in a semi-professional capacity lol!!!)
My point is that the labour provided by university students is, in part, used to control the casualised service industry. The best way to control workers is to ensure that they have little control over how much work they get, and if they get work then the boss or admin staff are doing them a ‘favour’, by ensuring there is always a surplus of labour available. This is what is bullshit. For example, like Laura, my servo job was permanent part time and I actually had greater security in that job compared to the casual academic employment I had all throughout this year. There is not enough permanent academic staff to lecture or tutor all the courses, so the PhD students and early career academics are used to fill in the rest. There will always be work available, but no security.
People who run businesses know there will _always_ be a supply of university students coming through. Each year some graduate and each year another cohort starts first year. The surplus of student labour is used to leverage those who work permanently in these workplaces. My point is actually less about the plight of university students and more about how university students are used to control the workplaces in which they sell their labour.
The argument from the side of business is that they provide ‘flexibility’ and university students are allegedly renowned for not being sufficiently responsible. More bullshit. People may be irresponsible, but do not tarnish a whole class of people within a given social structure. The workplace ‘flexibility’ is to the advantage of employers only.
For the last 2.5 years I worked in the best shitty job I ever had at a bookshop. It was still a shitty job, but at least there the employers and manager were aware of the fact I was trying to survive and therefore factored this into work rosters and the like.
SATP@68 this does work for some people (my retiree father being one who’s just finished his Science degree). Problem is that by the time most people have saved up enough the “mature-age” rules kick in. These can mean anything up to twice the cost and 5 times the bullshit rules. The paperwork he had to go through was down-right ludicrous.
I’ll be really happy to see him grad next year – considering both him and mum put me through uni (paying for everything).
I was one of the lucky ones – my better half had to work part-time as well as doing a science degree (the others have summed up the hours required). I don’t know how someone keeps their sanity alternating between hours of mind-numbing work and 3rd year quantum mechanics – somehow she did.
Overall – HECS was bloody brilliant in the 90’s, from what I’ve seen (both statistically and from co-grads) the government well-and-truly got back the investment they spent.
It’s a pity the same investment wasn’t made in the TAFE system.
As for accommodation costs, thank god I never went to a Sydney uni…
“Jane, why exactly couldn’t your daughter attend Adelaide Uni or UniSA, both of which are within walking distance of North Adelaide?”
Exactly because her course wasn’t offered at any other campus, Paulus. Why would you choose to attend a campus an average 2 hour, 2 bus ride from where you live if the same course was offered at a campus within walking distance? And Magill campus is a UniSA campus as it happens and is only 15 minutes by car from North Adelaide. Another reason for the car.
Perhaps while we’re at it, you’d also like to explain how our choice to support our daughter financially while she studied translates into her having “a helluva sense of entitlement”? Or for that matter why not wanting to do shitty low paying jobs is evidence of “a helluva sense of entitlement”? Who in their right mind wants to do shit jobs? I’ll confidently wager the house that the poor buggers who have no choice but to do shitty low-paying jobs would much rather be doing cushy highly paid jobs. No doubt you, Spiros and SATP would want to whack them with the “helluva sense of entitlement” stick, the uppity sods.
My daughter was fortunate that we were able, with a lot of sacrifice, to support her. Most students don’t have that luxury.
“Who in their right mind wants to do shit jobs”
Most people in most of the world, excluding Australia, the UAE and a few European countries (and thanks to minimum wages, we’re not even really talking low pay in Australia).
I’m prepared to pay my share of what it costs to have a civilized and educated society, part of which involves investing in young people who can’t afford to invest in themselves. I consider such an investment sound, and see evidence that the return is well worth it. Are you prepared to pay your share? Or do you just believe you’re entitled to leech of the economic stability and prosperity created through affordable education?
Conrad – taking a shit job because it’s better than the only available alternative is not the same as “wanting to”.
Though it’s surely the case that there are those who actually enjoy the sorts of job that most of us here might consider ’shit’.
Jobs where you have little or no autonomy and little or no job security are great for the other family members when the person in that job takes out their resentment on them. Even better when you lose that job because there is an imperative to privatise services while saving absolutely *zero* money. Simply tops and great fun all round.
My mum tells me she really ‘wanted’ to work in telephony and take shit from people because she was a young working class woman. She also ‘wanted’ to be consigned to working solely in hospitality and retail jobs because she had to leave school early.
We really ‘wanted’ to have to take hand me downs from our neighbours too. I really ‘wanted’ to live in an area with 45% youth unemployement, it was awesome!
Jane,
Apologies are in order. I had read your earlier post quickly, and thought you were one of those joining in the chorus for much greater government benefits for students. That is what I – mistakenly – meant by a “sense of entitlement”, meaning entitlement to public money. I was definitely not meaning to criticise parents helping their kids through uni: mine also helped in many ways (though I did have to get some casual work too!)
“Who in their right mind wants to do shit jobs”
Most people in most of the world, excluding Australia, the UAE and a few European countries (and thanks to minimum wages, we’re not even really talking low pay in Australia).”
Conrad, they don’t want to do shit jobs. The poor sods have no alternative, they have to do them. And we are talking low wages in this country. Those shit jobs generally involve shift work at casual rates, so the minimum wage doesn’t enter the equation. Certainly casual rates are higher than normal rates, but not too many casual workers get 38-40 hours/week on a permanent basis. If you only get 5 hours/week, you’re well below the breadline.
And wot dj said @81.
The other thing which has been overlooked on this thread is student health. If you’re barely making enough to pay the rent, food and utilities, it puts your health in jeopardy. A visit to the dentist is completely out of reach, for example. And poor dental health has a major impact on your general health.
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say no alternative, but it’s fair to assume that most people who work in shit jobs do so because the available alternatives (subsistence farming, prostitution, living off the dole, living on the streets etc.) are even worse, and offer no possibility of upward mobility, whereas a reasonable percentage of ’shit’ jobs at least offer the hope of benefitting from improvements in labour productivity.
However a discussion about the reason that shit jobs exist in general probably isn’t likely to inform the current debate too well.
According to an RN piece the other day (Geraldine Doogue?) students are spending (as opposed to offically receiving as income) $585 or such a WEEK on average. How on earth does that qualify as ‘poor’?
I read towards the top of the comments about someone who had to prove extreme family breakdown. I pleaded the same thing in the mid-90s, although there was no breakdown at all – I simply chose to move to the other side of the country with my then-lady-love and couldn’t be bothered chasing a job. Back in the days when you became independent at 21, not 18.
Thankfully, I got in before it became much more difficult to claim for this. A letter from my grandmother (which I wrote) and one from the girlfriend’s mother (which I wrote) plus a phone call to my parents from Centrelink (I think) was all it took. My parents supported this, albeit a little reluctantly, on the basis that Mum worked in welfare and was thoroughly pissed off at the rorting done by others claiming one government benefit or another. “All these other bastards are getting my taxes, why shouldn’t you?” was her paraphrased attitude.
It was only an arts degree, and life was much cheaper than then, but I’d hate to be a student reliant upon part-time work for an income these days.
AdamRobertt @ 85 “According to an RN piece the other day (Geraldine Doogue?) students are spending (as opposed to offically receiving as income) $585 or such a WEEK on average. How on earth does that qualify as ‘poor’?”
Hmmm, this is not good.
They’ll be poor when all that credit finally catches up with them.
glen @ 87 – thats assuming that they are funding it through credit and not through parental support. Average figures like that aren’t particularly useful for working out how much government support is needed.
Some people don’t seem to understand the constraints of a university degree. I teach in a Information Systems degree and students do 16 hours contact time each week, but that is not all they have to do. The standard at all the universities I’ve taught at is that we expect 6-8 hours a week per subject in addition to the contact time. So, you are looking at roughly 40-48 hours week of study. Looking at time:
40-48 hours study
20 hours part-time study
1 hour travel time each day (only if you can afford to live in the inner city)
Adds up to 65 to 73 hours a week. This is very hard for the average 18 year old. Hell, that sort of work week is hard for nearly anyone. We all like to think we are very grown up by the time we finish school but I can tell you very few students are fully grown up by then. Students gain a lot of maturity over their degree. And of course they better not get sick or hurt themselves during the year.
It’s quite clear from my experience that up to 15 hours of week doesn’t hurt student performance at uni, but over 15 starts to impact and over 20 hours a week, most students find it impacts significantly on their Uni performance. So looking at
rates of pay for a 18 year old first year:
Waiter – 11.16 (20 * 11.16) = $223.20 * 32 = $7,142.40
$446.40 * 18 = $8,031.60
= $15,174.00
After tax = $14,547.9 / 52 = $279.76
Given that a share house costs at least $120/week and most are in the $150 range, then add on food and utilities and study costs, not counting initial set up costs
for living away from home, a student is going to have a very hard and lean time
in that first year. In my opinion, too hard for the average 18 year old for them to actually settle down and study effectively. Of course if Mum and Dad are putting in a chunk of money as well, then life will be easier, but that assumes that they can put in. What we want is for students at universities to spend their time actually studying and learning and developing the skills and knowledge and understandings and attributes to make them effective professionals, not just learning how to make do and do the bare minimum to survive and pass.
Re: 60 Chris (a different one)
Given how much time a student should be spending working on their computer, using a netbook is not really practical and definitely isn’t ergonomic.
As I keep telling my students, studying at university is a full-time job, and for the average 18 year old Uni student, it is a hard task managing the transition from school, adding a hand to mouth existence on top of that is one of the reasons a lot of students don’t make it through.
As far as the argument, that they are going to make lots of money, yes they are, and that’s why we have a progressive taxation system.
Probably not the story to tell me at any rate Youie, who no doubt faced such a highly cyncial Austudy employee heavily inclined not to believe my situation because of people like you. Thanks so much for contributing to that attitude that makes it that much harder for people who do need help to get it.
Take it you managed to somehow lie / get around what was at any rate a necessary ‘proving factor’ for me, which was to move out of home for a min. of 2 weeks? I ended up in an Anglicare shelter for 2 weeks, including a ‘fun’ assault by a drug addict. It was just fab. So thanks again.
Martin @ 89 – its possible expectations of studying hours at university have changed significantly in the last decade or 2, but at least in the mid 90s, with the exception of cramming around exam time, students studying for that many hours was quite rare – and there certainly wasn’t that sort of expectation (engineering/computer science faculties).
My wrists continuously remind me that spending substantial time on any kind of laptop keyboard is not really practical, but an external keyboard/mouse is both cheap and portable.
FWIW I agree with you about where the number of hours working affects studying and there are some students out there who do need more financial support so they are not forced to work excessive hours. In terms of computers these days though I think consumers get sucked into spending a lot more than they actually need – its not restricted to students.
Re Myriad at 90.
We all gotta blame someone don’t we…
Chris (a different one)@ 91
Well, when I was at Uni, in the late 80s and early 90s, those were the sorts of hours you needed to put in to be successful, and I was doing a Bachelor of Computing, my friends doing Comp Sci, did similar hours and those doing Engineering did more because they had up to 30 hours contact time, but still had to do lots outside as well. The big difference from today is that failing wasn’t such a big thing then, students didn’t work, students failed and they came back and repeated multiple times, it’s far more serious now to fail courses than 20 years ago. I was also teaching in Comp Sci in the late 90s and I assure you that my courses required 10-12 hours a week to do any good in, unless you were an exceptional student.
But I can also tell you that today lots of students think that they can get away with doing less than their 40 hours, and some can, but nowhere near as many as think they can, and very few could get away with doing less than 30 hours a week.
These have really only been available this year at that cost and form factor and the ASUS EEE PC is a very neat machine, especially with Linux, and I have several students who use them, but the unanimous opinion is that while very useful, there’s no way they can replace a proper notebook/desktop, as
1) the screen is way too small, which means buying an external monitor as well, which is not a trivial cost
2) they are way underpowered even for word processing and spreadsheets, let alone programming or anything else serious.
It’s interesting to note that ASUS have moved to a bigger form factor in their later models, to be only slightly smaller than a basic notebook.
cheers
Martin
Oh it’s not just you, Youie, there’s plenty more who contribute in kind, and of course there are some people who work in public positions of ’service’ who are actually just non-empathetic bastards who enjoy the power. But having worked now for 6+ years in the public service, I can say with confidence that the people who rort the system (whichever system it may be) directly contribute to the cynicism and disdain for people in genuine need of the services that often pervades those who serve in them.
I’m certainly not simplistic enough to blame you and only you, but neither am I going to read about your actions and say ‘gosh that’s nice for you’ and not point our your responsibility – I mean, what were you expecting, congratulations?
Heh, maybe you went to a more demanding uni, but it wasn’t my experience in the early 90s doing engineering and computer science. Engineering did have a lot of contact hours and scheduling of lectures was very poor but perhaps couldn’t be helped. The comp sci load and difficulty in comparison was a whole lot easier. But most people I knew weren’t pushed nearly as hard as you describe in terms of studying time. Except for just before exams where people really did cram.
I think you make a good point about maturity. Having later been working full time and doing post graduate studies part time I learnt to be a whole lot more focused and efficient. And if I had worked the same way during uni I would have had a lot more free time (and got better marks). Which explained why the mature age students generally did pretty well when I did my undergraduate degree even though they often had jobs and/or family commitments.
Thats interesting to hear. I’ve only played around with them, but have certainly heard good things about them as tools for word processing/email/web browsing. For programming I can understand that they could well be a bit underpowered if universities are expecting students to develop large projects on their own machines. Back in the 90s we were expected to do all the work in the labs and remote access was very difficult to get.