The Greens Bill to abolish the Job Ready Graduate funding model has been nixed by Government-Coalition members of a Senate committee.
It is not going to be the end of the argument, what with last week’s announcement that as of next year top whack JRG fees, paid by bized, law, and HASS students, will be $54,085 for a three-year degree. There is an event planned at Parliament House today for students slugged by JRG to complain.
What pretty much everybody who gave evidence on the Green’s bill agreed, is that the Commonwealth should pay more per student place and students less. As lobbies, notably Universities Australia, warned, without an increase from the government for universities, reducing JRG fees would cost the system $1.3bn in funding for teaching.
And so Committee chair Marelle Smith (Labor SA) reported, “JRG should be replaced through comprehensive reform, rather than through a partial fee reduction that is not accompanied by a corresponding increase in public investment. In this regard, the committee notes the pricing and costing work currently being undertaken by the Australian Tertiary Education Commission.”
The “pricing and costing” Senator Smith referred to is by health-economist Stephen Duckett, retained by ATEC to develop an activity-based funding model for teaching, inspired by the system used in Australian hospitals.
Problem is, ATEC has no power to specifically recommend student contributions – which means the Government still has to decide who it is happiest annoying.
If ATEC set CSP costs for JRG courses at less than they are now, the Government could pass on some savings to students; thus upsetting universities and not appeasing the HASS lobby, unless study costs for their courses were in the lowest fee band, or better still, abolished – the Greens recommend “make university and TAFE free and wipe all student debt.”
So far, Education Minister Clare has appeared unexercised by the campaign for more public funding to reduce student fees. Instead, the Government cut $16bn off all HELP debts at the election and Mr Clare now talks up funding for more university places for disadvantaged students.
As Greens senator Mehreen Faruqui points out, “these fee hikes were brought in by the Morrison Coalition government almost six years ago and have been kept in place by the Albanese Labor government for the past four years.”
But there is a path to appease the humanities and social science academics who have led the charge against JRG. The creator of what is now called HELP, Bruce Chapman, and colleagues propose a four-band fee model based on graduates’ lifelong earnings, ranging $8000-$4000.
“We find that with the proposed alternative HECS-HELP prices, debt repayment longevity is reduced significantly for fields of education with the lowest expected incomes (principally humanities) by at least 20%, with debt repayment longevity increased for fields with the highest expected incomes (for example, Mathematics and Information Technology),” they suggest.
One take-out is, “the decreases in debt repayment longevity for the lowest expected lifetime income groups are greater than the increases for those with the highest expected lifetime incomes.”
Another key take out is that the model is revenue neutral for government.
So that’s that fixed; apart from explaining to lobbies whose students will lose – teacher ed graduates study fees would double to $10,000.
The obvious replacement for study costs under JRG is for government to pay universities more to teach all courses and charge students less – although Treasury might have a different view.