Wil Wallace: Higher Student Fees Just Aren’t Feasible (The Punch, 13/1/12) #auspol
Dear readers, please do not run away or close the window because I’m an Arts student: I have something important to say.
Over the past five years I have enjoyed a successful “career” (for wont of a better word) studying at four different universities and I now find myself in the early stages of a Doctorate.
There are many observations I could make about universities (my wife removes sharp objects from the room when anyone mentions VSU) but the issue most worrying me at the moment relates to the Group of Eight’s attitude towards funding and student contributions.
Michael Gallagher, executive director of the Group of Eight (Go8), seized the opportunity to call for the removal of any caps on student contributions.
Mr. Gallagher claimed that to subsidise student placements was a form of “middle-class welfare” and, alarmingly, that subsidising education was “socially regressive”.
The reasoning behind these claims is, at first glance, logical: students at independent schools pay more, get a better education and thus have a better chance of matriculating. However, Mr. Gallagher continued on to say: ‘‘Independent school fees act as a means of rationing access to very high quality schooling, excluding all but the wealthy”.
When I first read this I thought that it must have been a misprint or misquote – did the head of an organisation representing public universities really just advocate such elitism and exclusivity? When the Go8 released its policy paper on university funding it became clear that he wasn’t but given the bizarre reasoning used to develop the policy I am not surprised that the mistake was made.
It would seem that Mr. Gallagher and the Go8 were trying to drum up support for increasing student contributions by appealing to that old bugbear of independent school funding. Their argument is that the quality of education and matriculation rates at independent schools is largely the result of independent schools being able to charge what they like for tuition. Say nothing about the large number of families who send their children to independent schools because their local public schools have failed them or because they specifically want their children to matriculate.
Say nothing, either, about the fact that the fees for independent schooling pay for extra-curricular activities, different curricula and, at some schools, food and after-school tutoring. Or about the fact that many parents aren’t so much “willing” to pay the huge fees for independent schooling as they are obliged. The weight of the fees are especially felt by those lower-income families who have chosen to send their children to an independent school to make the most use of a talent or to give their children a better chance of success than their local public school could provide.
I say this with confidence because I know that my sister and I were not the only students at our high-schools (both independent) who did not come from a wealthy background. Even if independent school graduates are over-represented in university enrolments this does not mean that they are willing (or even able) to pay more for their tertiary education.
For several years student unions and the National Union of Students have been pointing out that a significant number of university students in this country have to take out loans and miss meals to ensure their financial survival while studying (and working) and that as much as 20 per cent of university students live in poverty. Even many students still living at home now have to work while studying to afford textbooks, parking and other non-deferrable costs of education.
Some universities have even started to reduce subsidies for important student services: the University of Adelaide and Deakin University recently hiked up the cost of parking permits, the latter justifying the rise by saying that the charges were in line with what the university could expect to charge if it was a parking company.
There is a recognised need to increase funding of university education. However, with students already bent double from the cost of tertiary education and with no guarantee of employment upon graduation (looking for work in a job related to your degree? Ha!) universities should look elsewhere for funding and stop placing the business of education ahead of education itself.
Comments from the original version on The Punch website are viewable here.
Wil Wallace: ‘Tis the Season of Bloody Useless Gifts (The Punch, 27/12/11) #auspol
Around this time last year my soon-to-be wife and I were finalising the preparations for our wedding. There are many questions that will be endlessly asked of newly-wed (or soon-to-be-wed) couples: How did you meet? How long have you known each other? Do the parents approve? But for me the worst question was “What do you want as a wedding present?” – and for two reasons.
Firstly, my wife and I had managed to inherit or buy most of the crockery, cutlery, cookware and linen that we needed to run our house in the early days of living together and by the time our wedding was drawing close we couldn’t think of anything else that we really needed.
The only suggestion I could make was for a new can-opener (ours had broken a few days after the wedding invites had gone out) and it was quite a challenge to convince people I was being serious.
The second reason is that I am the sort of person who finds asking people for gifts unbearably awkward. The idea of sending out a note to friends and family with a list of items we would like them to buy for us was anathema to me, especially given that the fashion seems to be to ask for fairly expensive items. A wedding registry? I’d much rather chew my legs off, thanks.
The reason I bring this up is because when the first Christmas shopping catalogues came through this year I began to think of what I might have asked for if we had been so bold as to organise a wedding registry.
Leafing through the catalogues, it occurred to me that there was a remarkable amount of crap for sale – even more than in previous years. One catalogue in particular featured a range of almost a dozen small electrical appliances, each with their own specific task. A chocolate fondue machine? Well, I suppose that it’s probably a safer option than a saucepan. A pancake machine? Er, what’s wrong with a frying pan? A Dutch pancake machine? How many times are you really likely to use this thing?
And that’s more or less the point: there are so many gadgets and items for sale that look flashy and seem appealing but that will only be used half a dozen times before being forgotten and then rediscovered when you move house and realise that you have underestimated the number of boxes you will need.
When I was growing up my family had a term for these sorts of things: sponge sharpener. The term comes from an old Wizard of Id cartoon in which a gentleman asks his wife if she has seen his “handy dandy dial-a-matic sponge sharpener” (I can’t remember the punch line), though the sponge sharpener collector in my family was my mother.
There are strong fashion trends in homewares and appliances and it is remarkably easy to get sucked into the fad. How many of the following do you have: an espresso machine, a bread maker, a popcorn machine, a sandwich toaster (and maybe a café style one, too), a tagine, automatic room air fresheners, a deep fryer, a lettuce spinner, cookbooks by a celebrity cook or on an “exotic” region like Italy or Spain, and (my personal favourite) an avocado saver?
With the exception of the espresso machine and possibly the sandwich toaster (if you really like sandwiches) or the cookbooks (if cooking is more of a hobby than a chore for you), there is very little gain to be had by owning these things. As I mentioned before, you can now buy a pancake machine; if you can’t make pancakes using just a frying pan and a stove you should probably go watch TV and let someone else make them instead.
And what’s wrong with pot pourri? Keeping a room or cupboard smelling fresh used to be as simple as pouring a bag of dead plant matter into a bowl, putting it somewhere and enjoying it. Now you can buy air fresheners that have been more engineered than your average car and that run out of spray so quickly that they often become little more than an elaborate cat scaring machine. It shouldn’t take batteries to keep your room fresh.
We are about to enter into one of the busiest shopping seasons of the year and the urge to splurge will be stronger than at any other time. My suggestion is that we resist the siren call of the sponge sharpeners and save our money for things that are really worth it. The worst it could do is annoy Gerry Harvey and, frankly, I’d still count that as a win.
Comments from the original version on The Punch website are viewable here.
My name is Wil Wallace
Wil Wallace is an historian, volunteer and writer. He was born in Adelaide at a hospital that is now a hotel and grew up in a house that is now part of another hospital; the realisation that the world is a confusing and bewildering place is a great inspiration in his writing.
Early in his childhood, Wil was convinced by a number plate that Victoria was "The Place to Be" and now lives on a property out of Lara, near Geelong.
After spending the summer of 2009/10 on scholarship at the Australian National University Wil completed an Honours thesis at Deakin University that was recently nominated for the Vice-Chancellor's Prize.
He is now working on a Doctorate through the Australia Centre at the University of Melbourne.
Wil is a disgruntled and non-voting member of the ALP and does not follow any particular doctrines or philosophies.
As well as reading, writing and studying he likes to cook and take photographs.
If you have any questions, please feel free to email: questions [at] wgwallace.id.au