Do Australians care about unis? They're now part of our social wage, so we should
- Written by Marcus Banks, Social policy and consumer finance researcher, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University
In 1988, then federal education minister, John Dawkins, drew upon the politics of class privilege to justify rolling out HECS student loans. A university user-pays system was needed, he argued, because Labor was not in the business of funding “middle-class welfare”. At the time, one reason a neoliberal appeal by Labor to its base could deflate widespread public opposition was that just 7% of working-age Australians held a degree.
Three decades on, Education Minister Dan Tehan is also dog-whistling up the politics of class to cut off the loans system to first-year students who fail half their subjects, ramp up fees for many others, deny JobKeeper to workers in the sector and cut funding.
National Archives of Australia/AAPDawkins’s representation of the policy problem framed higher education as a bastion of privilege. It relied on the relative absence of working-class students and the irrelevance of higher education to their parents.
For Tehan the problem is represented by these students’ overabundance — particularly in courses that do not produce workers with the specific technical skills he claims are in demand by employers. Tehan’s call to rid the system of failing students is couched in paternalism, a hallmark of the welfare system.
Agenda predates COVID
On the surface, a small cohort of students mostly from low socioeconomic backgrounds appear to be the target. Politically, however, it neatly links with the government’s broader restructuring agenda across the campuses. For higher education students and staff alike, it epitomises what the National Union of Students (NUS) president has called a neoliberal way to “incentivise success through fear of punishment”.
The restructuring goes well beyond the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. An explosion of casual employee networks across the country and a recent national assembly of nearly 500 academics voting to build towards unprotected industrial action have boosted campaigning by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and NUS against the current cuts and broader restructuring agenda.
Read more: As universities face losing 1 in 10 staff, COVID-driven cuts create 4 key risks
What has changed since 1988?
There are optimistic grounds for thinking that broader societal support is now more likely than in 1988 for this defence of universities as a freely accessible public good.
In May 2019, a third of the working-age population (20-64 years) held at least a bachelor degree. That’s almost five times more than in 1988. And nearly two-thirds of this group had a degree, diploma or post-school certificate.
Some 46% of women and 35% of men between the ages of 25 and 34 have a degree. Soon most women in this key working-age cohort will be university graduates, alongside a significant proportion of men.
Authors: Marcus Banks, Social policy and consumer finance researcher, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University