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The Forum > Article Comments > Graduates and taxpayer must pay more for a world class university system > Comments

Graduates and taxpayer must pay more for a world class university system : Comments

By Alan Robson, published 3/11/2010

Should university graduates pay fifty percent more for their education?

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Tobor makes sense: who benefits from education? Everyone!
So why not return to an education system run along the lines of Medicare?

After all, ignorance causes enough harm to a civilised society as it is, we all need as much education as the citizenry can bear.

Please consider.
Posted by SHRODE, Thursday, 4 November 2010 10:13:51 AM
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You're right, Yabby. And all those fat cats running the Unis got their educations fully taxpayer funded.
Posted by Shadyoasis, Thursday, 4 November 2010 10:32:55 AM
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Hasbeen, I agree, the tipping point is close to arriving as green labor’s higher education places & university placements for their own sake are at the end, and what is needed is not those who want to go straight on to the public teat (public service, encompassing dogma) but individuals who want to infuriate and further the productive, those who really want to make a real difference using their own drivers, enterprise, instincts, calculus in contributing at any age, not just wasting scarce taxpayer “funds” (money in everyday language) and time sorting out themselves or “stringing out” free time in collective political parlance to suite the social experiments of labor and their unions on compliance and non core impractical application to meet the their impractical challenges, to supply the local green vote in support of their state sponsored benefactors.
Posted by Dallas, Friday, 5 November 2010 12:25:29 AM
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Cornflower and Hasbeen have a fair bit of truth on their side. What really started the rot was the Dawkins Reforms, which began in 1988 under the then federal Labor government. Before that time, there were a reasonable number of universities for the population plus a network of Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs), which offered undergraduate degrees and tertiary diplomas, usually in more vocationally oriented areas. It was quite possible, though, for a student to work for an undergraduate degree at a CAE and then go on for an honours degree year and postgraduate study at a university. The CAEs were much cheaper to run than the universities because the academics were not expected or paid to do research. The Dawkins Reforms turned all the CAEs into universities, and a much higher proportion of the population were encouraged to attend.

Courses have been dumbed dowm because of the large numbers of students who either weren't paying attention in high school or have forgotten everything that they learned, as well as foreign students who are too profitable to be allowed to fail. Some students, domestic and foreign, simply lack the talent or the interest required for their courses, and the foreign ones may not understand English well enough to cope. Due to creeping credentialism, many people are effectively forced to waste their time in this way.

The government tolerates this expensive mess because universities make good holding tanks for the unemployed and defuse social unrest, especially since many apprenticeships have been eliminated due to privatisation, outsourcing, and an unending supply of skilled migrants already trained at someone else's expense.
Posted by Divergence, Sunday, 7 November 2010 5:27:42 PM
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I am wondering if student attrition has been written into the formula for universities wanting more blood extracted from the taxpayer and student.

"STUDENT attrition in Australia's universities comes at a cost of more than $1.4 billion a year, or an average of $36 million an institution."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/high-university-drop-out-rates-cost-14bn/story-e6frgcjx-1225940860074

The concept that universities are expensive because they carry out research is rather a weak excuse.

What research?

I frequently look at this website that presents research from Australia.

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/

It is possible to go for a week with no research from Australia on the website. As well, any research undertaken rarely seems to make it to the market place anyway.

The universities also import almost everything they use, which basically means their research over decades has not been sufficient to even run the universities.

Taxpayers are keeping the universities alive, not the other way around.
Posted by vanna, Monday, 8 November 2010 3:10:41 PM
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