Higher education policy development should involve learning from the Abbott government’s mistakes and other counties where university reform has been successfully achieved.
Simon Birmingham has announced the deregulation of university fees will be delayed until 2017 at the earliest.
Sam Mooy/AAP
The opposition’s statement today rules out a number of the current government’s policies. Deregulation, as they’ve said before, but also plans to expand the demand-driven system.
Universities need to be encouraged to collaborate more, not compete more.
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Currently universities collaborate with one another and with other sectors in myriad ways, greater competition through deregulation could discourage such collaborations.
Australia ranks 30th of 31 OECD countries for public investment in higher education.
AAP/Paul Miller
International students are more attracted to universities that charge more, so would price equal quality in the eyes of Aussie students if fees were uncapped?
If universities increase their fees and students can’t pay their loans, should the university be held responsible?
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Students rated their financial literacy quite low, which means many students who have managed to secure a place at university don’t believe they understand about debt.
What students should contribute to their degree has been a hot topic of conversation since the government tried to remove caps on fees.
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Currently law students pay about 80% of their degree cost, and nursing students only about 30%. Is it fairer if everyone pays the same?
Do the Group of Eight universities actually have a cash-flow problem, or are they more concerned about increasing their prestige to attract international students?
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The Group of Eight have now withdrawn their support for fee deregulation, despite it already having caused fissures in the higher education system. But what are they worried about? And what sort of conversation do they want to have now?
Harvard has around 20 times the investment of Australia’s top-ranked university.
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Education Minister Christopher Pyne claimed his plan to deregulate university fees was essential to boosting Australia’s place in the rankings. But no student fee rise will give us close to the level of funds of the top ranked unis.
The government shouldn’t be trying to deregulate one half of the tertiary education sector while re-regulating the other.
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Before the government tries a third time to secure support for university fee deregulation, it needs to learn from past mistakes in the tertiary education sector and come up with a plan.
Lack of consultation, lack of information and lack of justification have led to the second failure of Pyne’s higher education bill.
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The voting down of the higher education bill stems from the government’s failure to sell the reforms. Here is a six step guide to successfully making big changes to higher education.
Expansion of the demand driven funding system would be a positive outcome for students, but an expensive one too.
AAP
While the attempted higher education reforms have been a fiasco, the public has become alerted to the importance of universities and fair access to higher education.
Despite months of lobbying and an 11th-hour bid at compromise, Christopher Pyne has failed to negotiate the passage of his university reforms through the Senate.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
The Senate has defeated the government’s plan to deregulate university fees 34 votes to 30, with Labor, the Greens and five of the other eight crossbenchers combining against it.
The government tried to be egalitarian in arguing for these reforms. The trouble was the 2014 budget left voters feeling the government was anything but.
AAP
Education Minister Christopher Pyne has announced a last-ditch effort to try to save the government’s plan to deregulate university fees, which faces defeat in the Senate.