Tuesday, April 17th, 2007...2:20 pm
Melbourne University employs lying idiants*
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Well, that’s what my niece calls them.
On RN’s breakfast show this morning, the Melbourne University bloke described how tops HECS was because it eliminated the upfront cost barrier to entering university.
I hope he just spins, and doesn’t teach anyone anything. Like logic, for example.
22 Comments
April 17th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
He said it on the 7.30 report as well. I think he’s the Vice-Chancellor or something.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Yes, he is.
I’ve heard that argument before. Rhetorically it always tacitly implies that without HECS, australian higher ed would have had no option but to go fully fee-paying. Which is, you, know, crap. I just find it interesting that this tends not to be said, as if it’s so blindingly obvs.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Yeah, why do students have to pay? Why can’t, you know, someone else pay for their ejumacation?
April 18th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
um tax?
April 18th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Fyodor, stop encouraging ignorance.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
“um tax?”
Um, how is HECS/HELP* repaid?
“Fyodor, stop encouraging ignorance.”
Somebody has to, dear lady. How else will us evil plutocrats keep the proles in their place? Besides, I’m not encouraging ignorance; I’m discouraging parasitism.
* That really is a cretinous acronym.
April 19th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I disagree very strongly that a person who receives an education which fits them better for being a useful member of society is a parasite, and I also think parasiting in many situations is not that bad (eg infancy, old age) and doesn’t deserve its bad reputation.
But the really bad thing about paying for education: university students who think of themselves as ‘paying customers’, as they are all encouraged to do now, are inclined to be passive, dependent, demanding of spoon-feeding, and they think of themselves as buying something from the people hired to teach them: they think that if they pay for learning and don’t get the learning, it’s because they somehow got ripped off or sold a dud.
This is the real reason education should be a cost acknowledged as being shared about among the whole community rather than borne by noble little consumer units.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Knock me down with a feather. You are assuming, of course, that giving persons free tertiary level education creates social benefits greater than the cost to the society of funding that education. That’s highly debateable. The person who benefits most from tertiary education is the person receiving it. That person should pay for it. If that person receives a benefit from others without paying for it, they are in a parasitical relationship. We can debate the moral implications of this however much you like, but that’s the fact of it.
Further, you’re arguing that society wouldn’t obtain these benefits if the state did not provide free tertiary education, or that somehow HECS/HELP denies people an education they would otherwise obtain if it were free. Both contentions are highly debateable.
The latter because HECS/HELP repayments kick in only after the graduate earns a reasonable wage, i.e. it’s not a financial barrier to undertaking tertiary study.
The former because the entrants into the university system are overwhelmingly from middle-income and upper-income families, not the poor, who are woefully under-represented and who could reasonably expect to struggle to fund a degree.
As it is now, HECS/HELP embeds a material - and not means-tested - subsidy to tertiary education, with degrees effectively purchased for much less than the cost of providing them. This subsidy overwhelmingly benefits the middle class who can typically afford to pay directly. And you want to INCREASE this middle-class welfare by making it free?
As for your complaint about spoon-feeding, I’m not really prepared to take it seriously. Are you really suggesting that we should make degrees free so that students would be more appreciative and less demanding? Maybe if we pay them to study and give them free beer they would also learn some manners and do their homework on time?
I thought you were onto a better argument with that “greater good” furphy, but maybe demanding students are a real downer. I dunno - to each their own.
If the NLCUs are the ones benefiting from education, there’s no reason why the community should pay for it.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Oh, come on down from the 47th floor, Fyodor, and smell the coffee. $36K is the threshold.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Zoelander, the coffee comes to me. Actually, that’s a fib. I regularly walk around on ground level amongst hoi polloi. It gives me a sense of enormous well-being. And then I’m happy for the rest of the day, safe in the knowledge there will always be a bit of my heart devoted to Teh Little People.
Also, at $36K, you pay 4% in extra tax. That’s around $28/week for a tertiary education, or about what commuters pay in bus/train fares. BFD.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:59 am
You imperialist running dog, it IS a big deal. Particularly if you have kids or other debts.
Thank god I’ve seen your warm cuddly side ’round purring at PavCat’s feet.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Oh, I know, I know. And there’s the mortgage and the thingummyjig and the whatsit and the rest. Life is so very hard when one takes on lots of financial obligations. Particularly when one was forced to study at university.
Or what? You’d think less of me? This isn’t the first time you’ve implied I’m a heartless bastard, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. The worst part is that I’m left with no rejoinder, as your perfection is beyond reproach.
April 20th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Zoe, as the repayments are through the tax system, graduates repaying HECS/HELP don’t notice they’re repaying until TaxPack time, at which point all that happens is they don’t get a refund. Everyone in a PAYE job pays the same rates at each pay packet, HECS debt or no debt. As boxhead said, BFD.
A more serious problem, Fyodor, is that (anecdotally) lenders are taking HECS/HELP and PELS debts into account when graduates apply for loans as if they were ordinary commercial debts. I’m a student-contribution supporter—on the Dawkins model—but HECS at the moment is a long way from being a fair system.
All that being said, universities whose research and teaching benefits the nation, economy and society can’t rely and shouldn’t be expected to rely on student funding for their existence. Dependence on full-fee paying students is just about the worst thing that could happen to an independent university/faculty/department. That’s quite a different argument, though, to the one about the morality of ‘parasitism’, on which I’m entirely with Laura.
April 21st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
We were asked about HECS debts when applying for a home loan late last year. If i remember rightly it was a standard question on the inital application form.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:08 am
Why is this a “serious problem”, Frisco? HECS/HELP is a financial obligation, so it’s logical that it be included in a lender’s assessment of one’s ability to repay a loan.
Where are these independent universities of which you speak? The last time I checked nearly all of our universities were sucking furiously at the teat of frothy government largesse.
Also, isn’t it about time you got yourself a gravy, Gama? How about the head shot from this ‘un? Not sure about the hat, but you Iberians are weird about headdress.
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:19 pm
‘Cause it’s a contribution scheme, boxhead, not a loan. The Government is not your creditor, and if you go broke or die it has no claim on your assets. Me, I’m an early modern aristocrat with strong views against usury, but I thought someone like you would have thought better of a policy measure that inhibited lending.
And as you and I both have pointed out, HECS/HELP and PELS are repaid through the tax system, so for PAYG earners it’s quite clearly *not* a factor that affects capacity to repay commercial loans.
I picture a Department of Education version of Romulus and Remus—in any case, it’s an image I’ll take with me to the privacy of the Captain’s quarters.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Didn’t say it was a loan, did I? I said it was a FINANCIAL OBLIGATION, just like income tax is a financial obligation that lenders take into account when assessing your disposable income available to service the loan they extend to you. Whether a young graduate dies or not is of lesser importance relative to the probability of DEFAULT due to the graduate taking on too many FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS.
How does this policy measure “inhibit lending”, pray tell? Lenders aren’t forced to consider it; they do because they know it affects the borrower’s capacity to repay the loan.
I’m not in favour of banks losing money on dud borrowers and, strangely enough, neither are they.
Except, of course, that it reduces after-tax disposable income available to repay said loans. A bugger, that, huh?
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:41 pm
True, I concede your point. Though presumably lenders would take into account borrowers’ disposable income based on a smaller pay packet-based repayment period rather than the ATO’s 12 months cycle.
The gravatar is on its way, BTW, downloaded, cropped and awaiting gravatar.com to get its shit together. It’s similar to the one you linked to but bettah.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Noice, Frisco, noice. You’re still Burqa’d here for some reason, but your even-more-bettahrer gravy is visible at that other place. You know the one I mean.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I blame the gravatar-caching wordpress module. Always keeping the little navigators down, consigning us to anonymity and the big blue head-bag.
April 27th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Bugger!
I missed this one.
Um, I agree with Fyodor.
And the way to make students stop feeling entitled is for Universities to grow a backbone. I was under the impression that this feeling of entitlement was a product of full-upfront-fees, not HECS.
I think a HECS scheme should be offered to apprentices of trades, too.
And that any financial bailout (ie drought assistance) should be provided by a HECS type model, rather than a handout as it is now.
I thought Ross Gitin’s article in the SMH a coupla weeks back on the subject was spot on.
Does free or HECS produce better graduates? Or is the quality (and, most importantly retention) of graduates due to lack of government RnD funding?
I say it’s the RnD funding. (This RnD also includes RnD into cultural stuff, over which Fyodor can suck my balls.)
July 28th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I guess i m late at this news. I disagree with Australian students having to pay for full fee for university ie taking out HECS, but I don’t agree with current rate of subisidary in HECS, it’s way too generous. As economic capability of average Australian improved, the HECS should be gradually reduced, rather being totally suddenly cut off, and of course entrance exam should be put in place instead of the Enter score, in order to select better candidate. I personally found ENTER score system doesnt really represent the capability of the individual.
Australian government should instead deal with drought problem, and also not wasting money unnecessarily.
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