WINTER IS COMING: Budget Leaves Students Out in the Cold

Student debt is set to escalate dramatically as a result of tonight’s horror budget, with a series of hard-hitting changes to the way universities are funded:

• Universities given the green light to deregulate fees;
• Cost of Commonwealth Supported Places shifted to students, with student contributions to increase by 20 per cent;
• PhD and Masters by Research students to be charged HELP of up to $3,900;
• Interest rates on HELP debts to rise to up to 6 per cent;
• Income threshold for repayment of HELP reduced to $50,638;
• Total lifetime borrowing limit on HELP removed, encouraging students to rack up extra debt;
• Students asked to foot the bill for their own equity scholarships, with $1 out of every extra $5 charged by their university under fee deregulation to go to an unspecified number of scholarships, of unspecified size.

“You don’t need a postgraduate degree to see that this budget sucks for students” said Meghan Hopper, President of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations.

“Joe Hockey’s Horror Budget has unprecedented consequences for students, researchers and educators at all levels of the higher education sector” said Ms Hopper.

“We’re saying goodbye to a knowledge economy and issuing in an uncomfortably ignorant Australia by shifting funding of higher education on to the student, slashing research centres and putting research degrees on FEE-HELP” Ms Hopper said.

In practically the only new funding granted to the higher education sector, the Coalition has announced it will conduct three surveys on the student experience and will revamp the brand new MyUniversity website.  The cost of these surveys is not provided in the budget papers.

“This disaster budget asks students to foot the bill for their own equity scholarships, giving $1 out of every extra $5 their university adds to their lifetime debt under fee deregulation” Ms Hopper said.

“The Coalition claims they are supporting students when in fact they are forcing universities to charge students more, to support themselves” said Ms Hopper.

“But the good news is, Generous Joe has found some spare funds to conduct a survey and build yet another MyUniversity website – at least would-be students will be fully briefed on the courses they can’t afford to take” Ms Hopper said.

“I don’t need to wait for Joe’s survey results to be announced to know what students will think of his changes to higher education and research funding” Ms Hopper said.

Contact:

Ms Meghan B. Hopper
President – Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations
president@capa.edu.au / 0421 807 303