The Howard Govt, and the previous Labor Government are "Yes Minister" revisted.... only in real time!

Both parties stances on HECS are unbelieviably hypocritical.

If Governments are all so concerned about debt in society like they say then to add another layer of debt even before a young person gets into the workforce is outrageous.

In previous times a young person could expect to have a car loan and then later a home loan. Now thanks to Labor and with enhancements from the Govt the Universities they are creating debts for our young people, many in courses that will not lead to employment in that field in the future.

How anyone can call this reasonable behaviour I will never know. I don't care whether you are Liberal or Labor both have weakened the futures of our young people with this ridiculous charge. If Universities and other educational institutions are selling courses that have inadequate job outcomes then they should hang there heads in shame.

Whilst there is a massive shortage of Drs and Pharmicists there is an oversupply of teachers. How can Governments and Universities be getting things so wrong?

It's simple - money! Uni's are funded through a bums on seats system and so now courses often lead students to become highly qualified unemployed people or worse still kids who may never work in their chosen fields just because the jobs never existed there in the first place.

Ask a young person who has come out of Uni with a Drama related degree... where are the jobs? Also ask a teacher in Qld who has just qualified. These wonderfully positive young people suddenly find out that the jobs don't exist in their chosen field.

As an older person I apologise to the young people, even though I was always against HECS, because other complacent people looking at the buck and not the big picture allowed it to be introduced.

Where is the "Duty of Care" responsibility to our young people in this country regarding education?

once upon a time, in a land very nearly our own, universities were places where people went to get 'an education'. afterwards, many left to do things in the wider society. a few stayed on to become the next crop of academics. thinking was not only encouraged, it was required. and the academics did some thinking of their own.

today, in more enlightened times, universities are training colleges where people pay to get trained up so they can work in corporate and govo-corporate land. 'academics' are expected to train people in useful stuff like engineering and econometrics. thinking is for defined purposes only.

institutions that had once been an integral part of the development of western culture, its' science and technology, are now at risk of becoming cheap outsourcing r&d labs for corporations. who should be doing at lot of that work for themselves.

collaborations between industry and acedemia are not new, and are not intrisically bad. but the agenda, the driving ideology, behind "user pays" is a very narrow view of capitalism. one that overemphasises the benefits of "the market" and neatly glosses over negatives.

academia is said to be the refuge for disaffected people who couldn't make it "out in the real world". very, very few academics are removed from reality or the world around them. they live out in the community. many of them travel a heck of a lot more than most people do. the very purpose of their work is to examine this world and these lives we all inhabit.

just because you cannot understand or relate to the work an academic in humanities is doing doesn't make that work irrelevant. it means you don't understand their work. get over it.

how many of you really understand what *anyone* does, outside your own workplace?

to dismiss a sociologist because they criticise government policy as being irrelevant is narrow-minded and probably just proves their point.

and frankly, in a democracy, alternate and opposing ideas are not only acceptable - they're crucial to the health and welbeing of both the demos and the kratein.