I think it’s about time we introduced HECS fees for all those people who obtained degrees without contributing to the cost of those degrees.
The argument is that educating tertiary students costs the taxpayer money, and what’s in it for the taxpayers – why ought they fund some snotty kid’s education? By the same argument, those who got those free educations between 1974 and 1989 ought to cough up and return the same portion of the cost of that education back to the people of Australia.
1974-1989 exclusive maybe. In 1989 students (including myself) paid HECS.
As such a young country, we’ve always tended to take lessons from our older English speaking ‘friends’ here. UK and AmeriCAN. Why not look to Scandinavia where they try not to sell everything off to the highest bidder. They are a number of countries with the future in mind. Socialism has worked. EDU rankings speak for themselves. Australia’s not there yet, and we don’t need or want to be a Singapore. Lets employ 20 Scando. experts to advise us on everything that affects our future. Let them come up with a list and keep career politicians away from it. I don’t want my kids with huge HEC’s debts. I don’t want their kids deploying Teaparty trust fund tactics to secure their place in the best Universities. Lets keep calling them Universities and not Colleges.