Fake culture wars a distraction from fee hikes, cuts & chaos
FUNDING
NEWS & CAMPAIGNS
As Dan Tehan took to the podium at the National Press Club on June 19, our sector was in crisis: a $16 billion revenue black-hole predicted for 2023-2024; a workforce locked-out of JobKeeper three times; 30,000 people projected to lose their jobs. In a pandemic-recession wreaking havoc, Australia's higher education sector was looking for leadership from the Minister. Instead of announcing what was desperately needed – a real support package to save jobs and an injection of new money to 'build a bridge' to the other side – what we heard was a recipe for fee hikes, funding cuts and chaos for university courses. Rather than bridge building, the Government is more interested in blowing up bridges in a fake culture war pitting the humanities against STEM, and socalled 'pro-job' vs 'no-job' degrees against one another. As NTEU Monash Branch President Ben Eltham observed in The Guardian, these false dichotomies are a distraction. The reality is that the Tehan scheme is a threat to the idea of accessible, quality education in Australia – and it must
Jake Wishart Communications Organiser (Digital)
be defeated by our union in the workplace and in the Senate. Behind the spin and the reheated culture wars, Tehan’s scheme amounts to a 15% cut in funding per student, with many degrees more than doubling in price. The scheme would see a significant reduction in the proportion of government funding going to higher education as a whole, with a fall in total CGS funding of between $800–$900m per year at current enrolment levels. For those degrees fortunate enough to see a fee reduction, the resources available to teach those courses will be similarly slashed. As usual, staff are being asked to do more with less.
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Image: Melissa Walker-Horn/Unsplash
vol. 1 no. 3
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nteu.org.au/sentry
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