The Government's decision to extend paid practical placements to students in 10 allied health programs has been widely welcomed.
The announcement also gives Education Minister Jason Clare something new to talk about when avoiding questions about $54,000 arts degrees.
Paid prac pays students $338 a week while they are on mandatory course placements that take them away from home or stop them working in their regular jobs. It is currently available to Bachelors and Masters students in teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work. As of July next year, paid prac will cover ten additional health discipline degrees, including clinical psychology, paramedicine, physiotherapy and rehabilitation therapies.
Mr Clare pitched the program on Nine Network TV yesterday, “These are the people who, when you ring Triple 000, they come to your rescue or when you hurt yourself, they help you to get back to work; if you have a stroke, they give you the speech therapy that helps you to find your voice again. They are the front line of our health system and this will help them to stay at uni and to finish their uni degrees.”
This is a sure-fire political sell, a snip at an extra $158m on the now $730m the program will cost for the rest of the decade. Mr Clare and Health Minister Mark Butler were quick to be in pics with grateful students yesterday and university lobbies and professional associations were out early endorsing the extension.
They join Free TAFE and demand-driven funded CSP’s for undergraduates from Indigenous and low SES backgrounds, as the sort of initiatives the Government can promote. Whatever the attrition rate on the $5bn or so Free TAFE will have costed by the middle of the decade, who does not want more construction trades and aged/childcare workers?
They are the policy positives, which last year’s $16bn HELP debt cancellation was not. But it presented the government as graduate-friendly.
Overall, Mr Clare has plenty of student support spending to talk about when he wants to ignore complaints from current students about the cost of degrees.