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- 4 September 2002
Tafe Higher Education Contribution Scheme Fees
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Page: 4549
The Hon. RON DYER [9.43 p.m.]: When speaking on the adjournment on Tuesday 4 June last I expressed concern regarding the apparent intention of the Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training to require TAFE students to pay Higher Education Contribution Scheme [HECS] style fees. I noted then that Dr Nelson had released a ministerial discussion paper, "Higher Education at the Crossroads", which suggested that HECS could be extended to vocational education and training [VET] courses. I noted that if this were to happen approximately 700,000 TAFE students around Australia could be affected, and that instead of paying TAFE fees ranging from $300 to $690 a year, they would have to meet HECS charges of between $3,500 and $6,000.
My words seem to have been prophetic in that in a further higher education discussion paper released on 19 August this year by Dr Nelson the introduction of HECS style loans for TAFE students to go on to gain a degree at a university was canvassed. My colleague the New South Wales Minister for Education and Training, the Hon. John Watkins, promptly responded by stating that TAFE students who, as I have said, paid between $300 and $690 a year, would be forced to pay up to $6,000 under the Nelson proposal. Mr Watkins said-and I agree-that we should be making it easier, not harder, for young people to get an education. In my speech earlier this year I particularly noted that, especially in regional areas, TAFE makes a vital difference to the employment prospects of many people, including very needy people in our community.
If the prospect of charging at HECS levels for TAFE courses becomes a reality, the skills base and the economy of rural and regional New South Wales will be damaged. Dr Nelson appears to centre his concern on some students who initially study at TAFE and transfer to university after a year or two and then receive credit for their TAFE courses. Dr Nelson is reported in the Sydney Morning Herald of 29 August as asking, "Is this in fact a way for some students to receive a backdoor university degree on the cheap?" In regard to Dr Nelson's reported comment, I note that of the 220,000 students who enrolled in universities in 2001 only just over 5,000 students were given exemptions at universities for their TAFE studies. I would also like to express a more general concern regarding the direction of Dr Nelson's apparent higher education policy.
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on 2 September, Associate Professor Robert Manne of La Trobe University notes that one Nelson discussion paper suggests that a new hierarchical system should be created for Australian universities. Under this system some universities would teach only undergraduate courses; others would combine undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and only the best universities under this system would be able to enrol students for doctoral research. Essentially, universities would be divided into high-prestige, research-driven institutions and low-prestige institutions committed almost exclusively to teaching and very basic research. In other words, there would be elite universities, probably the group of eight, at the apex of the higher education system and other less expensive and less prestigious universities at the base of the system.
My main concern is that, although Dr Nelson concedes that in the future a higher level of funding for Australian universities will be necessary, he has made it clear that while the Coalition remains in power in Canberra such new funds will come from students and their parents, either from fee deregulation or a voucher system. It seems inevitable that if Dr Nelson's policies are put into effect by the Howard Government prestige universities will do well and others will enter a process of decline. This does not seem to me to be the best means of promoting the interests of higher education and the future of the great mass of Australian university students.
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