Free education? Pigs ribs!

There is no justification for expecting tax payers to fund the increasing number of no hopers and time wasters swanning their way through dumbed-down courses (if they even finish) which will be of little or no use to them in the real world. The incompetents of the system are already showing up in the public service – which is about the only organisation that will employ them.

The courses are dumbed down deliberately to attract more of the drones, who were never suited to university education in the first place, mostly due to the socialist state’s appalling secondary education system where most of them barely learn to read and write; and where the poor dears are not stressed by such terrible things as examinations because it might lower their self-esteem! More important to indoctrinate them with Left-wing politics, which, it could be argued, is good grounding for the tertiary system of brain-washing.

We have, at best, a mediocre education system in Australia. There is no respect for anything handed out free of charge. Even the socialists – after the idiot Whitlam – worked that one out. Take away the cost, and we will be knee deep in morons.

Ms Tranter,

You misunderstand Gramsci's quote and intention. Gramsci was a cultural Marxist, and the "long march through the institutions" meant that institutions should be reformed under cultural Marxist ideals. Incidentally, this has already taken place in the academe, and has been taking place since the 1960s. Australian and European history, along with other subjects taught in the Humanities and Social Sciences, have been thoroughly instantiated with "cultural Marxism". Any reform by the government would be to try and bring the curriculum back to the centre somewhere, instead of the extreme left (not that Pyne was addressing higher education, he was addressing primary and secondary schools).

Quote "If free education is good enough for Germany, Mexico and elsewhere it should be good enough for Australian students."

Where will the money come from for free education?

It is easy to have grandiose plans like NDIS etc but again where will the money come from?

Australia is billions of dollars in debt.

The key point of this essay was of course the reference to Gramsci and the soft power strategies used by the ruling classes to maintain their Cultural Hegemony - how they have in the words of Chomsky "manufactured consent"
Pedantic as usual I suggest that Henry Giroux is superb in describing how the hegemonic strategies of the ruling classes have been systematically applied in recent years.
Meanwhile of course the capitalism world-machine, and its now everywhere dramatized "culture" of death has all but destroyed what there once was of Civilization, and is in the process of destroying the biosphere too, and thus by extension (or simultaneously) humankind too.

Dear Kellie,

There is no such thing as free, there used to be of course, it was called the “air we breath”. Then along came the progressives and put a Tax on it.

When you say “free” you don’t mean that at all do you? What you actually mean is that you want to use someone else’s money, right?

It might be much more polite of you to acknowledge that fact and then make a case to those who you feel should pay. Instead you incite students to get angry and demand our money.

The problem the “regulating class” has with the wider public, is that it is gradually dawning on them that the entire progressive block is working contrary to the interests of all Australians.

Sure you are concerned for “some” Australians, just not those who actually generate the wealth.

Like all progressives and their useful idiots, you have formed a parasitic relationship with our society, we give and you take. If we don’t give, you demand. If our demands are not met you threaten, abuse, vilify and bully we plebs with intellectual rhetoric.

I suspect that you are inciting anger to drum up business, because you fully recognize that your human rights activism business is about to go down the gurgle as the entire issue, along with yet more of the government funding upon which you rely, is going to be taken off the table.

Stirring up the campus dependent troops will only antagonize Australians more.

I genuinely hope that you and Wikileaks can find something decent to do for our great country, in the meantime do try to avoid pursuing that which is contrary to self interest.

There seems to be two empirically testable hypothesis in contest here. Kelly’s hypothesis is that HECS will discourage people in general, and disadvantaged people in particular, from undertaking higher education. Under this hypothesis, since HECS was introduced the proportion of people undertaking higher education would have declined, with the decline occurring disproportionately among disadvantaged groups.

The alternative view is that HECS will not act as a deterrent because the lifetime earnings of graduates are higher than non-graduates. Rather, HECS will allow the higher education sector to educate more people and target the disadvantaged more directly. Under this hypothesis, since HECS was introduced the proportion of people undertaking higher education would have increased, with the rise occurring disproportionately among disadvantaged groups.

The data show that participation in higher education by 17-19 year olds rose from 12% to 25% between 1982 and 2010. Participation by 20-29 year olds rose from 6% to 12%

The proportion of disadvantaged and indigenous students has been broadly stable.

It seems that HECS has not had the detrimental effect its detractors expected.

It is also fair that students contribute to the cost of their education. They are the main beneficiaries. The lifetime earnings of graduates are significantly higher than the earnings of non-graduates. While there are also broader social benefits from having an educated population which justify a level of subsidisation, the private benefits make it fair that students also contribute to the cost of their education.

Hi Rhian,

In relation to Indigenous enrolments, I have to point out that they have risen by some 120 % since 1994. Commencements of Indigenous women have risen by more than 350 %, i.e. in 2013 there were probably four times as many as in 1989. All such data is available on my web-site:

www.firstsources.info

Indigenous graduate numbers have risen ten times since 1990: from around 3,300 in the 1991 census to around 35,000 now. HECS has had not the slightest effect on Indigenous commencements, enrolments or graduations.

Back to topic: Gramsci was of course writing, mostly from prison under Fascism, at a time when it was believed that capitalism had entered its final phase, from which it would have no return. So a 'march through the institutions' was the duty of progressives, to destroy such moribund, but militarily powerful, capitalism from within, by white-anting its institutions, especially its school and social institutions.

It was quite understandable for Gramsci to believe as he did: there seemed to be no alternative in his mind to Fascism but Bolshevism (and it's a tragedy that he thought there was much difference between the two). But capitalism - as Marx noted many times - has an amazing ability to bounce back, so much so that it also is flexible enough to allow progressives well up into its structure. Far enough up to be able to influence much of the policy of a capitalist state, especially social, educational and environmental policy.

Hence, the comments about 'a march through the institutions' are a bit ironic: its what some of us progressives have been doing for decades.

Regards,

Joe

Much of the increased university participation rate since 1980 is due to a combination of factors unrelated to HECS.

One of these is the upgrading of colleges of advanced education to university status. Another is the widespread professionalisation of fields of employment that were once entered from high school, TAFE or a CAE, but now require a full university degree or advanced education diploma. Trades that were once learned on the job now demand a much larger tertiary education component.

Another factor is the explosion in overseas student recruitment, which has been a huge money spinner for a now thoroughly privatized advanced education sector, which indirectly feeds the government coffers.

As with much of the Western world, what has now evolved in Australia is a career system that demands a tertiary degree or diploma as a minimum requirement, but one that must be funded by the student and/or the student's parents. No government is going to upset such a sacred cash cow.

The beauty of this - to the perennial and all-pervasive neo-liberal mindset we all now live under - is that more and more people are being snared into the debt trap at a much earlier age.

Kellie's rallying cry to students to demand free education will go nowhere. The average person under 30 has lived their entire life within a neo-liberal cultural framework that has conditioned them to view debt and 'user-pays' as moral purification against the moral corruption of social(-ist) spending. As everything in our economy is geared to getting people into debt, and keeping them there, no one is going to rebel against that anytime soon - even if they wanted to.

Joe
Thanks for the link. The data make for interesting reading.

Killarney
I agree that many factors besides HECS have driven the trend in student numbers, not all of them desirable. But surely the point is that HECS clearly hasn’t done the harm that its detractors claim it does. Levels of participation in higher education by disadvantaged groups, Aboriginal people and people generally are far higher than pre-HECS, even in St. Gough’s day.

I’ve seen “neoliberalism” blamed for some strange things, but seeking to snare people in a debt trap is a new one. Can you point to a neoliberal who has actually advocated this?

The banking Military Industrial Complex is driving us all into abject poverty and we are arguing about who gets the crumbs.

The solution is to get back to Govt owned banks and we can create our own money for infrastructure and education debt free.

Money represents our toil and costs nothing to produce, so why is there always a shortage of this simple medium of exchange?

Rhian

‘Can you point to a neoliberal who has actually advocated this?’

It’s a bit hard to ‘point to’ a neoliberal, as neoliberalism doesn’t manifest itself as a ‘person’. It’s a philosophy that drives the current system of global power, just as capitalism drove the industrial era and feudalism drove the medieval period. All these systems of power maintain a ‘debt’ contract in one form or another, in order to keep the masses under control.

‘But surely the point is that HECS clearly hasn’t done the harm that its detractors claim it does.’

This is more an issue of moral philosophy. In my opinion, a system that saddles young people with a debt of tens of thousands of dollars, before they have even started to make their way in life is immensely harmful. I know many people in their thirties and forties, who are still paying off HECS debts.

Killarney

“Free” education isn’t “free”, it’s paid for by taxpayers, most of whom will not have the career and earnings opportunities that graduates enjoy.

If neoliberalism is “a philosophy that drives the current system of global power”, I would expect you to be able point to one of its philosophers.

I don’t deny that elites and those who exercise power develop ideologies that justify their actions – Rome’s pax Romana, the British empire’s “white man’s burden” and American exceptionalism spring to mind. But these were/are all coherent and articulated philosophies. It would have been be easy to find someone who said “I believe the British empire is good for its subjects because …” You might disagree with them, but that’s a different issue.

You can’t point to anyone who argues that user-pays is “moral purification against the moral corruption of social(-ist) spending” or that the purpose of the economy is to put people into debt, and keep them there. They don’t exist.

At best, we’re back in the Marxist/Gramsci territory of false consciousness – people don’t really understand what they believe and why. We’re mental puppets of sinister forces. The problem with this is that it is deeply elitist and insulting (you presume to know the basis of my beliefs better than I do). It is also unfalsifiable and irrefutable. How can I prove to you that my support of HECS is based on a belief it is fair and efficient, and not because I want people to be permanently burdened with debt? How can you prove to me my beliefs are really based on acceptance of the dominant neoliberal paradigm of controlling the masses through debt, which to my mind seems preposterous? Appeal to motives can also be used to evade engagement with the substance of your opponents’ argument.

In my observation, “neoliberal” is a term of abuse used by the left to describe social and economic policies they disagree with, overlaid with assumptions about the reasons for advocating those policies that bear little relationship to the actual motives of those who propose them

Rhian

I meant 'philosophy' as a general worldview. If you want a list of names and ideologies on neoliberalism as a bona fide field of intellectual endeavour, just go to Wiki. You can nitpick the details all you like, but neo-liberalism is just the latest terminology for the perennial, age-old business of the rich screwing the poor by running the poor into some form of servitude, usually via debt.

The basis of neo-liberalism is a user-pays ideology in which individuals must take complete financial responsibility for all their needs and thus drive a free market. The beauty of this is that most individuals can’t afford to pay for all their needs and must go into debt in order to do so. The more services you deny the public, the more individuals must go into debt to pay for them.

Socialism – or as it more commonly expresses itself, social democracy – is the antithesis of this. Social democracy minimises individual debt by the free or near-free provision of many of the services that people need.

However, as the international monetary system is based on debt, social democracy has been under vindictive attack from neo-liberalism (and before that, capitalism) for many decades.

As for HECS, I agree that free tertiary education does partly use taxes paid by the non-tertiary educated taxpayer to provide free education for the tertiary educated taxpayer. But then the tertiary educated taxpayer also pays tax to provide facilities for non-tertiary educated taxpayers.

An easy enough way around this dilemma is to reintroduce free education that is means-tested. (Is that Hell I see freezing over?)

Killarney

In effect, HECS is means-tested, but it is means-tested against the student’s future income, not their the parents’ present income, which seems to me fairer and more appropriate. People earning less than $51,309pa do not have to repay any HECS, and above that threshold there is a progressive step up in rates so people with higher earnings pay proportionately more.

I’m sure that googling “neoliberalism” yields squillions of hits. It doesn’t mean it exists, at least in the form its detractors propose.

Many opponents of “neoliberalism” take parts of others’ views that are often qualified and contingent and present them as dogmatic absolutes. Except perhaps on the loopiest fringe of anarcho-capitalism, no one believes that “individuals must take complete financial responsibility for all their needs,” and not even these believe driving people into debt is the objective of economic policy. Again, I challenge you to point to a single individual or organisation of political influence in Australia that actually propounds this.

It is certainly not the basis of HECS, which covers only about 20% of the cost of higher education. For school students the state contribution is far higher, and for good reason.

In societies like Australia, the political debate is not between the extremes of total laissez faire and total state control. The vast majority of people accept that we have a mixed economy in which both the private sector and the state have legitimate and beneficial roles, with the latter including both ensuring that citizens have access to some essential services, and redistribution and a social safety net. The main debates are about matters of degree. Some favour more intervention in markets or government provision of services, some less.

The evidence supports this. Government consumption as a percentage of GDP has been stable at 17-19% of GDP for 30 years. Social assistance benefits as a percentage of household income have risen from about 5% in the 1970s and 7½ % in the 1990s to 9% in the past decade.

If there is a neoliberal conspiracy to wind back the state, it has been spectacularly unsuccessful.

Hi Rhian,

I agree with you, HECS is not some sort of conspiracy to bankrupt younger generations, concocted out of the evil mind of some neo-liberal.

I owe around $ 25,000 in HECS but since I'm not working for any income, so any repayments keep getting postponed. As with many 'senior citizens', some of us work every day, doing what we think is valuable to society, and getting nothing for it in financial terms.

I own my house, but if ever I sold it for something much more modest, or in order to rent, I would have no hesitation in paying off my HECS debt first.

In my view, I owe that debt to society, not particularly to the state: tax-payers allowed me to study and as far as I am concerned, I owe them. I studied because I wanted to, and I really enjoyed it, an old fart amongst all these beautiful young people, mostly Asians, mostly gorgeous young women (at least, as I remember it all), and I wouldn't have missed it for quids.

So I have no qualms about paying back ASAP some of the expenses incurred by institutions, and thereby the 'state', and thereby the taxpayers, in my education. I used their money, I had a good time, and I expect to do the right thing and cough up as soon as I'm able.

Thank you, my fellow Australian taxpayers. Hey, give it a try :)

Joe

Maybe you didn't hear, Kellie, but all the money slated for giving free education to your mates was splurged on providing Centrelink benefits, free housing and free furniture on the 40,000 boat people who turned up with their hands out last year.

I don't know what degree you have got Kellie, but I will bet it is not Economics.