Editorial: HECS The Making of the Indebted Woman

Zelda Smith and Alexander Lane

“Debt creation, that is, the creation and development of the power relation between creditors and debtors, has been conceived and programmed as the strategic heart of neoliberal politics.” - Maurizio

Lazzarato

Debt has always been one of capitalism’s key contradictions. Supposedly giving the individual greater freedom to consume, and oiling the wheels of globalisation, while tying us to future work and bringing about life-destroying instability.

That all students must eventually pay off substantial debts for their tertiary education is already a travesty. Education should be free for everyone. The current HECS-HELP system incentivises universities to exploit students, while insisting that education is a means to employment and not a fundamental means to improve the individual and society.

However, debt is not impartially omnipotent, but rather perpetuates the economic oppression of minorities, in this case women. Debt is a commitment to future work and when that future work is systemically undervalued by a patriarchal society, women end up further in debt than their male counterparts.

One in four men will finish university with a HECS debt between $20,000 - $50,000. However, one in three women will graduate with the same debt. And when a woman seeks to pay her debt off, she is less likely to earn the same as a man, either in her field or across society. 57% of men with a Bachelor’s degree will earn over $70,000, while only 42% of women will earn the same amount.

Research shows that a tradesperson without a Bachelor’s degree will earn more than child carers, nurses and teachers - all women-dominated fields that require tertiary qualifications.

This problem only promises to increase in the future. A large number of women-dominated industries tend to earn between $30,000 and $70,000. With current inflation, women cannot pay down their HECS debts on such salaries. As women get lumped with most of society’s unpaid work, child-raising and house-chores, their ability to pay off their debt decreases.

Women aged 55-64 make up the largest cohort on unemployment payments and the government itself admits this is the most financially vulnerable cohort.

The end result is a society in which we acknowledge structural forces that hold women back from birth, and yet we continue to put more barriers in front of women. Debt that cannot be expected to be paid back is slavery and entrapment, it fosters dependence on male “breadwinners” and reasserts the primacy of the nuclear family.

Right as we rethink the tertiary sector, including its financial model, we need to rethink the structural inequalities built into it. Any form of debt-funding for education will always oppress the already-oppressed who, statistically, are likely to make less money after graduation.

Art by Jasmin Small

In response to the status quo, and the Jobs Ready Graduate fee hikes, we propose that the quest for “job readiness” and key skills may more effectively be addressed by systematic cultural and societal change than crudely increased debt.

As we undermine the role of arts and humanities in our society, we look to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as key skills for the future. Despite this, STEM fields have the highest gender employment gap in the country, and eighty percent of women studying STEM do not continue into STEM-based careers due to discrimination, inflexibility, a lack of female role models and a male-dominated culture. One may argue that an improvement in the culture of STEM may do more to address employment demand than changing HECS-HELP contributions ever could.

The fact remains that linking tuition fees to ideas of employability has been proven a flawed means to address structural unemployment. STEM graduates make for some of the most unemployed in the country.

The Jobs Ready Graduate package also perpetuated the impoverishment of women. For example, psychology is a female dominated science, which many universities class within their schools of Health and Medicine, and is regarded as an allied health career, but is charged equally as a humanities degree. Even in a skills shortage and a youth mental health crisis, the need for psychology based careers has not subsided like other STEM courses. It raises the question of why some skill shortages are prioritised over others, and further reduces the ability for women, even those studying science, to benefit from HECS changes.

For the ANU, prestigious and popular humanities degrees including PPE, international relations, and politics face declining participation due to increases in HECS-HELP contribution. These degrees also face a loss of funding which has arguably lowered teaching quality and resources. However, our University sends a clear message about the kind of skills it values when it doesn’t teach nursing or teaching. It is always the disciplines that men dominate which are prestigious and worthy of a national institution, never the women dominated ones.

Debt is the modern means to bind the worker to capitalism, to ensure that even if they are conscious of their exploitation, the threat of physical dispossession still looms large. When we speak of our HECS-HELP debts, we often speak in terms of a fair price for university, as if students should pay in the first place. We must understand as well the gendered oppression that student debt enables, we are witnesses to how the modern economy continues to hold women back.

by Cynthia Weng