so true and simply said.
even I can see that, and saw it before you said it.
I often wonder if there is more to these things than meets the eye.
If they want to discourage people from going to uni (which is another possibility) why don't they just say they have enough of certain professions etc. note they are helping apprenticeships and trades, and not before time... but its interesting to speculate about possible "unintended consequences" of such moves. (i wasn't going to say any of that, but I have.... Probably won't get to read (too busy) what anyone else writes below.. but it would be interesting to see what is made of my ambiguous comments... they are just a few thoughts I had, nothing more.

...When will you poor simple souls ever learn? Tom Sawyer had no education; in fact, I had no education…Education is totally unnecessary for successful living! Here is a hint for successful living without education; Plunder, cheat and cajole..become a politician…no intelligence, no scruples and no education required!...(and stay out of jail, is also a handy hint)!

Sorry but nothing is free, someone somewhere has to pay for it!
That said, if we were all to follow DD's simplistic advice, there'd be no doctors to patch you up when wounded, and no lawyers to go to bat for you, if you were hurt due to someone else's thoughtless negligence.
There'd be no architects/engineers building our high rise towers, roads and bridges.
No whiz kid, working out just how strong the steel and iron needed to be, to remain standing when the ground shakes.
No technically skilled mechanics fixing our cars etc.
In fact, if none of us had no education, the only thing left as a survival mechanism, would be to go back to cave dwelling and running our food down with a stone on a stick!
Fortunately, the rest of us know that a good education is vital for our own and the nation's future, or indeed, getting a highly rewarding, do bugger all, or make the place far worse, political career.
The jobs of tomorrow will look nothing like today's!
And without good science and maths skills, we just will not be able to get our heads around the algorithms needed to function in this new high tech world!
What this government and the opposition won't try is real tax reform, to end avoidance and claw back the 95% of offshored corporate Australia, and their tax contributions; given corporate tax alone, was what made a so called free education possible! Somebody paid for it!
No ifs buts or maybes!
And getting corporate Australia to queue to onshore their operation is very doable, for pollies who just take the ideological blinkers off, and start focusing on Australia and Australians best interests!
And wouldn't that make a pleasant change from all the incredibly petty point scoring, that is arguably, this lot's only claim to fame!
Rhosty

You shouldn't need a degree in engineering in order to be an engineer.

If universities charge too much, then there are plenty of cheap text-books to read, or cheap engineering courses over the internet or in correspondance, or you could even study in a different country where it's cheaper. Or you could simply sit yourself informally in university-lectures and study the same for free.

If you wish to blame someone or something for the cost - blame the regulations! It is only those regulations dictating "who can do what" that create this inflation of demands which in turn allows universities to inflate their prices and causes many people to waste their life on unnecessary courses, irrelevant to what they actually want to do.

The author does her credibility no good by exaggerating. I can accept that deregulation of fees is likely to cause some course fees to go up but "$100k more" defies belief.

Allison we had engineers long before we had free or subsidised university education. Companies who wanted engineers paid for the tuition of promising high school graduates, with scholarships, or cadetships. They picked only the proven best. Governments paid for teachers scholarships, which is how most B SC & arts degrees were earned.

Of course they wanted a pound of flesh, usually 5 years of service after graduating, a pretty fair arrangement, which meant checkout chicks were not paying for others to become rich at their expense.

I had a company pay for some of my engineering degree, but paid for half of it myself, after we parted company.

I find it hard to see a reason why I should pay for someone elses degree, unless that is as a loan, to be repaid in full, & that should only be for disciplines that are useful to the public.

I can see no reason whatsoever for the public to pay for such useless degrees as political science, & I can see many reasons why we should charge double the cost of parasitical degrees such as law.

With user pays being the flavor of the month in everything real most people need, it is time to add user pays to the higher education industry. It will at least stop so many getting degrees only because the student support payment is higher than the dole, & might even have degrees in tiddlywinks disappear from the list.