AusPol101: University students are a key demographic, so why is the current election campaign overlooking them?

 

 

 

by Grace Mackenzie, a student at Deakin University in Melbourne.

 

 

I like to refer to myself as a generally positive person, even and especially when it comes to the future of politics. I think there is a great hope and, broadly, a slow shift towards a better future for my generation and those who come after me. I say this as a preface to what I’m about to write next, because I find it exceedingly hard to remain positive about the current state of policies specifically affecting university students.

 

It’s no secret that tertiary education is at becoming increasingly unaffordable to those of a lower income. But having lived on campus at Deakin for the first two years of my education in such a tight-knit community, it’s not an uncommon conversation topic to discuss financial situations. I’m lucky enough to receive most financial support from my parents, though I still need those few hours slinging beers behind the bar each week to get over the finish line. The vast majority of my friends aren’t as lucky. Each of us have had to move quite far , a long way from home, to get a decent education, but where I was fortunate to have two upper-middle class parents others have come from homes of single mothers, or from poorer regional areas, or lower income households. Some of the smartest people I know have to work twice as hard as me just to get to the same spot.

 

One of the worst stories of struggle I’ve heard over the years was a story from a friend who is in the process of completing her nursing degree. It’s already established that nursing student placements are gruelling work with long hours and zero pay, which obviously got a whole lot more difficult with a pandemic that has seen millions of cases and over 7,000 deaths. Despite putting all her placement preferences in Melbourne and her hometown, she was sent over 100kms away from anyone she knew. So, while she worked full time for free in the middle of a lockdown, she also had to pay $1700 out of her own pocket for accommodation and hundreds more for the cost of living there, all while still paying rent for her room on campus.

 

When my mum went to school in the `90s at La Trobe University, her parents paid her way through, something she appreciated the same way I do now. But there’s an obvious difference; my grandparents were not nearly as well off as their daughter and son-in-law are now. My grandfather was a truck driver, my grandmother a retail shop worker. On an average week $200 covered all her expenses, and the work she did over school breaks would give her some extra cushioning. I almost laugh because a number like that feels like a pipe dream, but before I made the daunting 4,000km move two years ago we sat down and budgeted the same number for me. We very quickly learnt how unattainable that was.

 

Back when my mum graduated in 1995 her HECS fees totalled at around $6000, and by around 1998 her debts were fully paid off. In 2022, my tuition fees almost double that cost at a whopping $14,317. But don’t be fooled, thanks to a massive hike in fees mid degree that number is solely for this year, I don’t want to even begin to think of how high my HECS fees are with the past two included.

 

So I find it increasingly ironic that politicians who benefited from affordable university (or even better, free) continuously push higher university fees on today’s students. The past two Prime Ministers alone have implemented such policies. In 2017, the Turnbull government pushed a 7.5% increase to student fees while also substantially lowering the income students had to start repaying from $54,869 to $42,000. Despite this, Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull himself received a completely free education, as did eight of his ministers. In 2020, the Morrison government announced an 113% hike in fees for those focused on topics such as media, philosophy, arts and politics. Poor old Morrison understands the struggle though because he unfortunately graduated the same year that HECS fees were introduced, meaning he had to pay tuition for one of the four years he studied. At this time of pushing students into more “important” STEM degrees, a whopping 16 members of the Liberal-National Coalition had received an arts degree. Alan Tudge, the Minister for Education has three. Four of the last eight Prime Ministers had arts degrees. These Governments understand the importance of humanities degrees, because for most of them it is an integral part of how they got to the positions of power they hold now. But policies such as these are an easy sacrifice to make when you aren’t locking you or your mates’ kids out of a future political career, just those in the lower tax bracket. “A student’s merit, rather than a parent’s wealth, should decide who should benefit from the community’s vast financial commitment to tertiary education,” Gough Whitlam once said. It’s disheartening to have to remember his infamous line and wish for it to be a common sentiment in politics rather than a radical statement.

 

So my question is, why isn’t this topic a key topic in the current election campaign? I don’t think I’ve even heard the cost of tertiary education, or the funding cuts, or the loss of over 40,000 university jobs over the pandemic brought up for more than five seconds by any major party candidate. Higher education is Australia’s fourth largest export, so for an industry that employs 200,000 staff and educates 1.5 million students to receive such a cold shoulder is a massive political red flag for me. A recent economic model from The Australia Institute shows that if the Australian Government lifted their spending on universities to match countries like New Zealand (a move that would only cost us 1% of our GDP), we would be able to put funding back into our universities, employ thousands of staff and make undergraduate degrees free. For a move that would protect and boost universities, especially those in regional areas, it seems like a massive oversight by the Albanese’s Opposition to not use this as a direct political attack on the current governments fee hikes and funding cuts.

 

 

I recently read an interview by 9news with Australian National University politics lecturer Intifar Chowdhury, in which she states that younger voters have made a strong movement into issue-based politics, and that as such they are a crucial swing-vote to target. This I agree with, but I find her prompt message that the way to get to this demographic is bright social media and an avoidance of negativity a vague in rather obvious statement. The idea of targeting young people on social media is only effective when done well, and if it falls flat it enacts the opposite effect of what the poster intends. I find it increasingly frustrating the lack of understanding about targeting young people when our behaviours are exceedingly easier to track than older generation’s. We are at our worst a cynical generation constantly hoping and pleading for the government for crumbs of policy that actually make our lives easier, and regardless of whatever end of the political spectrum we fall into we collectively understand that the systems in place today are not working.  That sentiment is not something that can be distracted by “snappy, colourful messages”, and any look on any of successful political social media pages ran by young people would show you that our comedic takes are simply a coping mechanism for how royally f**ked we feel regarding this issue.

 

 

Read Grace Mackenzie’s other AusPol101 columns HERE.

 

 

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About Grace Mackenzie

Territory raised Grace Mackenzie is a final year journalism student at Deakin University. Now based in Melbourne, she is an avid follower of Australian politics and is turning towards writing as an outlet rather than debating anyone in earshot. When she’s not writing, she can be found behind the bar slinging beers (or in front drinking them).

Comments

  1. When you have major parties using and wasting money left, right and centre, eventually every area is going to be affected by rate hikes so the government can recoup what they spend and waste it again. Case in point: Dan Andrews spending $580m on a covid quarantine hotel facility for travellers etc. now it has been shut down after 2 months of operation.

    We’re headed for a pretty bad recession or worse, as inflation rises and natural resources are becoming scarce as we try to import them here. Education fees is only one area of many that is going to be badly affected and it’s sad to see that either party is just going to tax more where they can while I can’t see any attempts to seriously try to improve the economy.

    We’re just ‘royally fucked’ as it stands with too many incompetent politicians holding seats in state and federal parliament in my opinion. Unless we get a hung parliament where the minor parties could force them to get their shit together things could go back on the right track? who knows

  2. george smith says

    I’m getting sick of the “one’s as bad as the other crap which bolsters the liberals claim to legitimacy in spite of their crimes.

    Labor will not increase taxes too much as Rupert’s rent boys will hammer them – Herald Sun – Pravda for rednecks.

    What you have to do is ask, what has 10 years of the Liberals got us? The idea that if you are rich enough, you don’t have to pay taxes…

    The idea that climate change is a problem, but it can be fixed by wishing upon a star, and then pretending to do something…

    And finally, what part of Australia is the Solomon islands, or Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan or even dare I say it USA?

  3. It does not suit the Conservatives for the lower classes to be educated at a tertiary level.
    They want the lower classes to stay ignorant and ill-informed. That is but one way in which they stay in power.

  4. This might be of interest, Grace and Luke: https://twitter.com/BilliFitzSimons/status/1519838756819197952

    My friend Tom Crowley has been involved and hopefully it gets up!

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