University fees for a range of disciplines are set to rise after the Morrison government bowed to demands from the Nationals to spare prospective psychologists and social workers from the biggest increase in costs.
And despite the change to the higher education package being promoted as a way to protect students in psychology and social work, those students are still facing increases of more than $1,000 per year compared with existing fees.
The Morrison government is due to introduce its proposed “job-ready graduates” legislation to parliament on Wednesday after the Coalition joint party room signed off on the deal on Tuesday.
The key element of the deal with the Nationals is removing psychology and social work from being bunched together with the humanities, which are facing a 113% increase in student fees.
The government says this means people studying psychology or social work as part of a pathway to professional qualifications will face annual student fees of $7,950.
Under the government’s original plans, fees in this area were set to rise to $14,500 – the same as law and the humanities. But the newly proposed fee of $7,950 is still higher than the $6,804 that would apply if the legislation failed to pass the Senate.
In order to offset what it says are “fee reductions for psychology and social work”, the government has revealed it will increase the maximum fee for some other disciplines by $250 compared with the original package outlined a few months ago.
The affected disciplines – which are at the lower end of the fee range – include teaching, English, maths, nursing, agriculture, allied health, engineering and several other disciplines.
The education minister, Dan Tehan, said the government had made “sensible amendments” to the legislation after listening to “constructive feedback”.
The regional education minister, Andrew Gee, who had been pushing for changes on behalf of the Nationals, said providing a lower cost pathway for social work and psychology would mean there would be “more vital health professionals to support the recovery of rural and regional Australia”.
But Labor and the Greens rounded on the government over the deal.
The opposition’s education spokesperson, Tanya Plibersek, said the government’s package remained “a shocker of a policy” and should be dumped altogether.
“Even with this latest change, Australians will still pay thousands of dollars more to study child protection or psychology,” she said. “I’m not going to give Scott Morrison a pat on the back for that.”
Senator Mehreen Faruqi, who is the Greens’ education spokesperson, said the deal had “only worsened what was already a dud bill”.
“In fact, the Nationals have made things worse for students and universities alike, with even larger fee increases and funding cuts baked into the bill to benefit a few students,” she said.
The government also announced it would give greater certainty on university funding by enshrining in legislation a “floor” for the maximum basic grant amount for higher education courses.
This followed concerns that the government would have the power to cut funding to universities in future without parliamentary approval.
Universities Australia said it was “pleased to see the government has heard the sector and given universities some certainty about funding levels”.
The Australian Technology Network of Universities said while the funding floor addressed one of its key concerns with the draft bill, it still wanted to see a guarantee of the indexation and regional growth amounts.
The government has also moved to revamp a payment designed to help outer regional and remote students to relocate to access tertiary study immediately after Year 12 – something that would provide $5,000 per student at a cost of $159m over four years.
The Nationals had raised concerns on behalf of country universities that the payment may encourage people to relocate to metropolitan areas.
The government now says it will distribute the tertiary access payment as a scholarship, with funds allocated to universities “based on historical enrolment of regional students”.
Gee said the change would ensure that country universities were “able to better compete on a more level playing field with their city counterparts to attract country students”.
But Andrew Norton, a professor of higher education policy at the Australian National University, said he was concerned the access payment would transform from a student entitlement into a university scholarship scheme that could constrain the choices of regional and remote students.
