Fees fumble

The Senate has placed Australian universities at risk of becoming no more than degree mills.
 
JUST when the Federal Government begins to cop flak for stalling on its ''education revolution'', the Coalition takes the chance to remind us how bereft it is of serious ideas about building a decent university sector.
 
Last week, the Coalition joined Senator Steve Fielding of Family First to defeat the student services bill in the Senate. The bill would have allowed universities to charge compulsory fees of up to $250 for a limited range of student services.
 
Students and academics anywhere else in the world would be astonished that this is even an issue. The ban on compulsory student services fees introduced by the Howard government is unique to Australia. The great overseas universities have the freedom to charge services fees, even in countries such as Ireland and Sweden where university education itself is free.
 
These universities understand that an education is more than just lectures and graduation ceremonies. For example, students at the University of British Columbia in Canada are served by the twice weekly student newspaper, Ubyssey. It looks like a proper newspaper and gives students a chance to try their hand at writing. In Australia, many student newspapers are struggling.
 
UBS students' fees also entitle them to a semester pass providing unlimited public transport travel across the region. The pass was introduced after a campaign by the student union and the newspaper.
 
Why is the student services fee an issue in Australia?
 
It dates back to the 1970s when liberal students, such as Peter Costello and Tony Abbott, realised they could never win campus elections. They decided that if they couldn't control student unions they would destroy them.
 
With the election of the Howard government these frustrated student politicians were now in power, and in 2005 they and Steve Fielding passed the voluntary student union bill. The government argued the ban would save students money, a claim that rang completely hollow in light of the massive increases in tuition fees introduced by the same government.
 
However, the Labor-aligned student politicians who controlled most university student unions made the Howard government's job easier. They turned student unions into training groups for aspiring politicians, employing election tactics that would make even hardened members of the NSW Right blush.
 
For example, early this decade the Melbourne University Labor Club entered a preference deal with the Liberal Club and disaffiliated its left-wing opposition from the union, making it ineligible to run as a party.
 
Once in power, the Labor Club entered a series of dubious business deals which resulted in bankruptcy. In 2004, the year before the Howard legislation, the Supreme Court wound up the union after a liquidator's report found it was insolvent. The report recommended that police investigate inappropriately awarded contracts and falsified records as well as ''issues of impropriety'' in the election of officers.
 
The big loser from the introduction of the 2005 legislation and the defeat of last week's bill has been campus life. The tendency for Australian university students to commute to and from lectures but play no part in wider university life is something visitors from overseas campuses often remark on. The withdrawal of services following voluntary student unionism has made this even worse.
 
Postgraduates, in particular, have been disadvantaged. A 2007 Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations survey found that a year after the introduction of voluntary student unionism at least eight universities no longer had a postgraduate student organisation.
 
A vibrant campus life is one of the differences between a real university and a degree mill.