The Australian | 3 December 2015 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… … [Read more...]
Improving equity through VET FEE-HELP
21/07/2015 by
21 July 2015 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… Two of the key architects of the original HECS, Dr Tim Higgins and Professor Bruce Chapman, have produced a new report that argues for significant reform to the income contingent loan scheme that would extend it to more VET students while making it affordable. They argue that extending income contingent loans to more VET students is required to ensure equity among tertiary students, but this would require adjustment to the current system otherwise it would not be financially sustainable or equitable. They note that when compared to university graduates, Certificate III and IV completers have low incomes and, for women, low … [Read more...]
Grattan Newsletter 19 May 2015
21/05/2015 by
Budget Policy This year’s Budget might be good politics but the long-term costs of a timid budget are insidious and they fall heavily on middle-income earners, young people and people who are not even born, write Grattan Institute CEO John Daley and Grattan Fellow Danielle Wood in The Australian. The Budget is likely to keep more people happy than the 2014 Budget, but it not only does nothing to address Australia’s long-term budgetary challenges, it is built on denial that we have a problem at all, write John Daley and Danielle Wood in The Conversation. Three days after the Budget, Commonwealth Treasury Secretary John Fraser made his only public statement on the Budget and … [Read more...]
The Scan # 169 15 May 2015
15/05/2015 by
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ GDP spending on higher education set to fall to half OECD average 15 May 2015 | Spending on higher education as a proportion of GDP will fall from 0.56% in 2015 down to 0.48% in 2018, well below the OECD average of 1%, an analysis of the 2015 Budget figures has determined. According to Vin Massaro, an honorary professorial fellow with the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, higher education spending is slated to drop from $9.3bn in 2015, to $8.9bn in 2016, $9.1bn in 2017 and back to $9.3bn in 2018, representing a drop in GDP every year. … [Read more...]
The Budget in their own words: National Tertiary Education Union
13/05/2015 by
12 May 2015 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… Despite more than three quarters of Australians opposing deregulation, and the Senate rejecting their plans for $100,000 degrees twice, the Abbott Government has kept its plans for university deregulation in this year’s budget.. …………………………………………………………………………………….......…… These plans include the full deregulation of tuition fees and a 20 per cent cut in funding effective 1 January 2016. “The government is undermining our public university system by extending public funding to private providers,” explained Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President. “This is something that staff, students and the public overwhelmingly … [Read more...]
The Scan #167 16 April 2015
16/04/2015 by
Student debt growing rapidly as compliance declines 16 April 2015 | With student debt ballooning, reform of the FEE-HELP system (HECS) is now a pressing budget issue with the nation’s second biggest financial asset, after the Future Fund, being eroded as one in five debtors renege on their loans. That figure is expected to rise to 25% by 2017. The government will have more than $70 billion in unpaid university student loans on its books in another two years, double the figure owed in 2013-14. According to researchers Richard Highfield and Neil Warren, the loans system is being compromised by successive governments’ commitment to increasing participation in tertiary education while not … [Read more...]
