campusreview. com. au
NEWS with a learning disability and a student with a mental health disability,” Pitman explained.“ We need to do more work to separate those groups and understand them and treat them differently.”
Pitman said prospects looked good in terms of low-SES students’ participation. However, he sees big question marks surrounding the relationship between the demand-driven system, continuation of HECS-HELP and fee deregulation.
REGIONAL WORRIES USQ’ s Thomas said there was talk that the proposed reform package could have a negative impact on regional universities.
“ A feature of the six universities in the Regional Universities Network is a commitment to regional communities and students,” she said.“ Although we enrol 9 per cent of domestic undergraduates, we have 25 per cent of all regional students and 15 per cent of all Indigenous students at university. We also have the highest
proportion of first-in-family [ students ] at more than 68 per cent.”
She added that this means enrolment, teaching and support costs are inherently higher for regional universities and their capacity to raise student fees to recoup income is more restricted.
“ There is an urgent need for the government to look more carefully at the real impact of its proposed cuts on the capacity for universities serving disadvantaged students to fulfil their mission,” Thomas said.
Professor Bruce Chapman, director of policy impact at the Australian National University’ s Crawford School of Economics and Government and architect of the HECS loan scheme, said it was hard to know how deregulation would affect disadvantaged students because the system has never been trialled before in Australia.
“ There is no evidence to support the proposition that fee increases will disproportionately affect the poor,” he
said.“ That doesn’ t mean it won’ t but we haven’ t any evidence that it will. When we look at other countries that have had large increases in tuition and an incomecontingent loan such as HECS, there have not been important demand effects.”
He pointed to England, where a 300 per cent increase in prices in 2011 was followed by a 10 per cent fall in applications in the first year, but no real effects in the second year, when applications were back up again.
Chapman did, however, express – in a paper he put forward with Australian National University’ s Dr Timothy Higgins – that using the bond rate instead of the consumer price index would cause poor graduates to pay more. The team established that low-income graduates might pay 30 per cent more for a degree than those who earn a high-income.
It has since been reported that the government would amend its plans for students to pay real interest rates on their student debts. ■
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