In April 2012, National Public Radio (NPR) in the US ran a story about student debt, announcing that American citizens owe over one trillion dollars in student loans.
Is this the direction Australia wants to follow?
According to Education Minister, Christopher Pyne, the answer is yes.
Pyne has often stated that universities in Australia are on board when it comes to deregulation. This may be true for management, but not so for lecturers, tutors and researchers.
Every semester I teach English literature to between 75 and 100 (mostly) eager students at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). UWS is the most diverse university in Australia, and possibly the world. I have students from Iraq and Israel, from the Tiwi Islands and Taiwan, South Africa and South America. Most are Australian citizens and 30 per cent are Muslim. Many are the first in their family to go to university.
We sit in a classroom in Bankstown, 20 or 22 in a circle, discussing Plato’s cave and Hamlet’s ghosts. We talk about the nature of utopias and dystopias. Sometimes the discussion veers towards ISIS or the biased portrayal of Muslims in the Australian media.
There are not many places where 20 people from radically different backgrounds can use literature as a jumping off point to discuss contemporary issues of the day, but the classrooms at UWS are one place where this can and does happen.
As a staff member, I am well aware of the financial situation of my students. Most are not well off. Many are in debt. On the first day of every semester, I ask them to tell me by show of hands if they work, and over two thirds have a job. Some work full time. A few are mothers who look after children and work as well as study. For most of my students, finding a way to pay their uni fees already takes away from valuable time that should be spent studying.
Three weeks ago a Charter for Australian Public Universities was published by a group of academics from four public Australian universities. Academics from these institutions have formed the National Alliance for Public Universities (NAPU) and voiced grave concerns about deregulating student fees. The charter has already gathered over 1200 signatures from every public university in the country, including that of the Nobel laureate, J.M. Coetzee, and over a hundred professors.
It may well be that university vice chancellors have voiced support for Christopher Pyne’s calls for deregulation. But, according to the charter released last month, they are ‘not representative of the concerns of university staff at large, but a management stratum that is beholden to corporate self-interest, particularly when faced with deep funding cuts and deregulation as the only option for making up the difference.’
Bravely, Stephen Parker, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Canberra, has also committed his signature to the NAPU charter, showing that the gap between management and staff is not unbridgeable.
I come from the land of deregulation. When I completed a degree at Columbia University in 2005, my university fees were $35,000 a year. They have since increased. Columbia is not particularly diverse. It is an elite university with students who are either rich or willing to go into a large amount of debt.
According to NPR, ’Americans now owe more on student loans than they do on their credit cards’.
I am amazed by the way Australia is willing to follow in the direction of the US when it is clear that this will only create more inequality, mainly by forcing people without money to either miss out all together on higher education or go into a huge amount of debt.
The first of eight ‘principals’ in the Charter for Australian Public Universities states that, ‘Universities provide both public and private benefits. To fulfil these, they must function independently of market forces and political interference.’
Making uni more expensive changes the nature of higher education. Choosing a university becomes akin to buying a new car, or a holiday. University campuses in America have begun to look like five-star resorts, and they have the price-tags to match, but are new squash courts and a Swedish style sauna equal to a good education?
Sky-rocketing university fees will lead to greater debt and more inequality in Australia. In a country that prides itself on its diversity and the notion of a fair go, is this really the right choice? Teachers at Australian universities think not.
Sarah Klenbort is a US-born writer of fiction and non-fiction who also teaches literature at the University of Western Sydney.
Student debt image by Shutterstock.