Stimulated students say thanks - but keep it coming

Student and university groups have welcomed the federal Government’s half billion dollar handout to students, announced as part of last week’s Nation Building and Jobs Plan. But it won’t substitute for genuine and lasting reform of student income assistance, they warn.
 
The $950 tax-free bonus will be paid in the fortnight beginning 24 March to students and apprentices who receive social security benefits. Equivalent payments will be available until mid-2010 to unemployed social security recipients who start studying at universities, schools or colleges. Conditions apply, but Treasurer Wayne Swan said around 440,000 people would qualify – and while the money is intended “to assist with costs for the 2009 academic year”, there’s no rules on how they spend it.
 
If the Training and Learning Bonus’s $511 million price tag only constitutes 1 per cent of the $42 billion stimulus package, it’s still in the same ball park as other recent tertiary sector splurges – such as the $500 million Better Universities Renewal Fund unexpectedly included in last year’s budget, the $500 million Teaching and Learning Capital Fund for Higher Education announced in December, and the $580 million being fast-tracked into universities through the Education Investment Fund.
 
And it could almost pay for Denise Bradley’s entire income support reform agenda, which she costed at $530 million over four years.
 
Income support is one of the four broad higher education areas seen as needing urgent cash injections, along with infrastructure, research and teaching. Infrastructure has won big handouts, and prospects improved for research when Cutler recommended that it be fully funded. This was also good news for teaching, given that tuition income is used to cross-subsidise research, and the government has also expanded the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund.
 
But before the Bradley report in December, income support had failed to be a significant part of mainstream government discussions. Now the government is handing out lump sums – provided the package passes the Senate. The National Union of Students claimed credit, saying it had been campaigning on youth income assistance since the 2007 election – right up until the day before the announcement, when the NUS issued a press release declaring students were “ready to be stimulated”.
 
NUS president David Barrow said students were “the perfect demographic to be pump-primed. Extra money for students through increases in youth allowance or one-off grants is good economic policy. NUS studies show that students overwhelmingly spend extra cash they receive on educational materials such as textbooks and laptops.
 
“Students are struggling, with one in eight regularly missing meals. Ever since the pensioners received increases last year, students have been waiting for the Rudd Government to provide relief for young people.”
 
Universities Australia CEO Glenn Withers said students would welcome the bonus, given that they’d missed out on the October 2008 stimulus package. La Trobe University vice-chancellor Paul Johnson said the bonus, along with contributions to school infrastructure, constituted “a fantastic first tranche of deep spending for the education revolution”.
 
But more windfalls should be forthcoming, they added. Barrow said a one-off grant wasn’t a long-term solution to the growing problem of student poverty. “The only sustainable solution is significant reform of student income support,” he said.
 
The NUS queer office (sic) was more strident, saying “Rudd’s one-off stunt” wasn’t enough. “We need a long-standing solution to this crisis and that would necessitate an immediate increase in student income support, rent assistance and an improvement in the entire system of welfare provision – which, in its current state, leaves many students without an income,” said national queer officer Liam Byrne.
 
The NUS is campaigning for the government to implement Bradley’s detailed income support reform recommendation – to greatly expand eligibility for benefits, as well as increasing benefit payments – with one exception. “We don’t support getting rid of the workforce eligibility criteria,” Barrow told Campus Review.
 
“The only ways you’ll get youth allowance are if you’re in a low socioeconomic bracket or if you turn 22 – but some students under 22 need to be independent. Currently, if students work for 18 months and earn a certain amount of money, they’re eligible. If they take that away, three groups will be disadvantaged – students living interstate, students whose lifestyles clash with what their parents want, and students who study a discipline their parents don’t value.”
 
The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations also has reservations about the Bradley recommendation. CAPA president Nigel Palmer said it left around 22,000 students high and dry, including almost a thousand coursework doctorate students with no access to income support. “And it completely overlooks research students who are not in receipt of an award or stipend. We estimate there are over 20,000 – domestic students attempting full-time study, without any income support at all.”
 
CAPA’s biggest complaint is that the Bradley report ignores last year’s ‘Building Australia’s research capacity’ report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Innovation. It said all higher degree research students should gain access to social security and other benefits, and that their stipends should be extended, indexed and increased in value by 50 per cent.
 
Nevertheless, there’s widespread agreement that the Bradley approach would be a vast improvement on the current system – and on a one-off bonus. Barrow said he doubted the government would use the bonus as an excuse not to reform student allowances. “If they don’t they’ll have a generation issue. The block that voted highest for Rudd was 18 to 25 year-olds. If they don’t start bringing home the bacon for young people, they can’t count on their support in the next election.”
 
Education minister Julia Gillard’s spokesperson said the bonus would have no impact on the government’s response to the Bradley report, including the income support recommendation. But two questions remain: whether the Senate passes the package, and whether the government has enough left in the till to pay for more lasting reform.