It seems Australia's Liberal National Coalition Govt. has had another policy brain fart aimed at making life difficult for the middle and lower socio-economic demographics.This time it's an attack on Tertiary Education funding and as always, they're muddle headed ideological thinking, has bugger all to do with reality.
So here goes; in a nut shell.
By cutting funding to the humanities and increasing student fees this LNP government is unwittingly creating more incentive for universities to enroll arts students.
My understanding is that; Currently an arts degrees is funded approximately 50/50 between federal government and students. Which is probably around $6,000 annually. The new funding model will see federal government spend only $1000, on an Humanities degree, while students fork out $14,000.
Therefore, one might expect fewer students enrolling. I believe this will be proven wrong.
Labor uncapped student places. About 2 years ago LNP Govt. reintroduced capping. But the cap didn’t stop universities actually enrolling more students. This simply meant, government wouldn’t fund their share once the cap is / was reached.
With this Govt’s latest brain fart policy: An arts degrees will now effectively be 92% student funded, meaning universities will receive 92% of revenue for over-enrolling above the cap! Where as the prior system, the Universities only received 50%. On the other hand, over-enrolling a science degree, will result in 10-20% of the total being received by the universities.
Keep in mind here - the fees are also going to be lower!
Now consider arts degrees are low-cost to deliver in comparison to STEM degrees, which of course means - the "profit" margin for the university is greater. Therefore, it stands to reason that the latest LNP Govt. brain fart tertiary education funding model gives all Australian universities an incentive to enroll MORE humanities students to boost their budget bottom line; not LESS.
As always the LNP haven’t really thought this part through - well, not an economic sense anyway.
No? This is about ideology NOT future economy. The supposed economic predictors are just the excuse.
So who is this going to hurt?
To answer, we get back to a previous point, is the students of course.
In the USA where, no doubt this latest brain fart’s inspiration comes from; Humanities graduates have massive debts which drag out for decades. This is what will happen here.
More importantly the point most people are missing, is that this overall shift of higher education cost placed on the students for the first time.
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| C.P Snow's, The Two Cultures. |
In the USA this model was a stated and achieved goal of the right wing in America from 1960's because they were identified as ‘ideological enemy’. Life long debt viewed as a way to prevent that ‘leftie’ ideology from being successful.
So don’t be surprised if at some future point LNP hand all that HECS debt to private companies. As we’ve seen recently with RoboDebt collection.
It's also interesting to note, that this new model also demonstrates, that the LNP's vision of future Australia would have fewer lawyers, journalists and - ECONOMISTS..... think about that for a moment.....
This is just a continuation of the ideology which saw Howard / Abbott go after the Student Unions, and the Morrison Govt most recently attempt to destroy works / industrial Unions.
My advice. If an individual, political party or Govt. show you who they really are - believe them.
Incidentally if you believe the Sciences are more important than the Humanities, then I encourage you to go and read, C.P Snow's, 'The Two Cultures'. My first degree was a Bachelor of Fine Arts, but all my electives are in Sports Science / P.E, and I believe, Snow pretty much hits the nail on the head. Unlike the Liberal Party - post Hewson.
