Universities and higher education experts have warned that disadvantaged students will be put at risk by the Coalition’s proposal to cut them off from commonwealth funding for failing more than half of their first eight subjects.
In submissions to the education minister Dan Tehan’s consultation on the “jobs ready graduate” package, the Group of Eight universities, National Tertiary Education Union, National Union of Students and Australian National University all warned the measure could see students excluded from uni rather than helped to succeed.
In addition to complaints about rising fees for many courses, institutions have complained that upsides to the package such as growth in places and extra funding for industry cooperation are not enshrined in the proposed bill.
The bill faces a tough road ahead in the Senate, with Labor and the Greens opposed and crossbenchers including Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie and the independent Rex Patrick questioning whether fee hikes in humanities courses and reductions in science will influence student preferences.
The Group of Eight warned of “perverse outcomes” if students were cut off from funding for failing the majority of their first full-year of eight units of study, arguing that many struggling students may not be identified and given “effective support” until after failing all four units in first semester.
“This places extreme pressure on a student for the following semester with their [commonwealth supported place] at risk.”
While the bill makes exceptions for “special circumstances”, the Group of Eight said it was not clear this would “routinely apply” to a student who was struggling but who “could be supported to success by the institution – as they should be”.
The ANU warned this would have the biggest impact on “first-in-family, lower socio-economic and rural and regional students away from home for the first time” who are “most likely to take more time to ‘find their feet’ in tertiary studies”.
“In our experience, most of the students who have a high failure rate in first year have had a sudden onset of a mental health problem or a severe financial problem.
“This measure will apply additional pressure to students who are already experiencing disadvantage.”
The NTEU opposed the measure, arguing that without more funding it was not practical for universities to identify struggling students and it was more appropriate to let them implement policies that account for students’ individual circumstances.
The NUS, which missed the Monday deadline and was seeking to make its submission a day late on Tuesday, said that exemptions for illness or bereavement were not wide enough to capture the “plethora of experiences” that could impact results, including disability, low socio-economic status and experience of sexual harassment or violence.
Andrew Norton, a professor in the practice of higher education policy at ANU, submitted the government needed to conduct “more detailed statistical analysis of the problems, especially around patterns of multiple and repeat subject fails” to craft a better solution.
Tehan unveiled the jobs-ready graduate package in June, proposing to reduce the overall government contribution to degrees from 58% to 52% and increase fees for some courses to pay for 39,000 extra university places.
The package has prompted the Nationals to revolt over fears a $5,000 payment for regional students to relocate will create a perverse incentive to move to the city for university and that fee hikes in social work, behavioural science and mental health courses will harm the regional workforce.
The Group of Eight submitted that Tehan’s bill locks in cuts to per capita student funding but leaves out indexation of maximum basic grants amounts, increases in places, the industry linkage fund and transition funding designed to ensure universities are not worse off while the package is implemented.
The ANU supported the current proposal for $5,000 for regional students, arguing it could help “reduce some of the financial inequality that makes accessing higher education more difficult for students outside our major cities” but called for it to be included in the bill.
The ANU warned that fee changes were unlikely to change student choices, citing fee increases of 300% in the United Kingdom that had “very limited impact” on courses of study.
Norton agreed that students’ preferences are “primarily based on their interests, with perceived job prospects influencing choices within their cluster of interests”.
Bruce Chapman, the architect of the Hecs-Help student loan system, noted that fee hikes will be experienced as a longer period to repay the loan, meaning the “true financial effect” on an 18-year-old humanities student would not bite until age 33 for a “median earning female graduate”.
Even a $20,000 fee rise for a humanities student, across the life of the loan, amounts to “about $4 a week, around the price of a cup of coffee”, he submitted.
