Mapping Australian Higher Education 2013

Monday 28 January 2013 4:05PM (view full episode)

Australia has 39 full universities and over 130 other higher education providers. So how are they going? Is there a crisis in higher education? Well, they are costing more and there are more students, and graduates tend to earn high wages but not all of them are paying off their HECS debt and not all of them are enjoying their university experience.

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Andrew Norton
Program Director of Higher Education
The Grattan Institute


Amanda Vanstone

Comments (12)

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  • low excitement :

    28 Jan 2013 4:45:52pm

    "Because all great minds don't think the same..."

    If only Amanda would/could think at all (before opening her mouth). It is so much more valuable than common sense.

    1) University students don't pay money for an education. They pay fees, yes, but the education (even just falling over the line and graduating) requires three to four years of EFFORT, or longer, while they sacrifice earnings. To equate government investment in uni students (young people who have had to apply themselves and achieve good grades to get in) with giving a teenager a start with a Commonwealth funded gift of a motor vehicle is ludicrous.

    2) University graduates are not the end users and beneficiaries of higher education. Their employers are. Higher education should be paid for through a pay roll tax levy.

    Invest in education, invest in young people committed to learning.

    The evidence is clear, university education has gone steadily downhill since the introduction of fees.

  • Lester Irving :

    29 Jan 2013 9:48:56am

    See RN big ideas 20/1/13

    for a very different take on Australian universities.

  • Jane C. :

    29 Jan 2013 1:19:47pm

    So Amanda Vanstone wants the lucky kids 'to be good' and pay back their HECs debts. So the ones that aren't paying back (mostly because they have not been able to acquire a job where they earn enough -- basically poverty-stricken and un- or under-employed -- are "bad". Ever thought that they maybe sweated their guts out trying to get adequate employment and got no where, because there are only so many jobs and someone will always not get them? Ever thought they might cry buckets and wonder why they spent years at university only to struggle year after year, unable to secure full-time employment? Doesn't sound like it. Sounds like a case of someone from a very lucky generation, job-wise and free education-wise, failing to use their imagination, and open their eyes up enough, to see how it can be for someone in a different generation and different times. I have an Arts degree and have been lucky to have found work for most of the years since I graduated. I know many who were not so fortunate. They are not 'bad'.

  • jules :

    01 Feb 2013 10:17:21am

    Beautifully written Jane C. but the fundamental thinking of Amanda V's side of politics, largely parroted from US thinking, is that there should be less higher education. From their perspective, what matters is gut feelings along with cut and dried, black and white opinions. Eduction produces elites and scientists. These are ivory tower people who just don't know what they're talking about.


  • Philippa :

    01 Feb 2013 2:04:06pm

    It would be nice if it were so simple.

    If we all thought at 18 or in our early 20s - "gee, I think I'll study something that will earn me a good steady job so I can pay back the money that it will cost to educate me in order to get that job and be a good citizen and not travel, not have babies and not educate myself through other life experiences until i've repaid my fees" ...

    Not, "What is my passion, what are my interests and how can I contribute to society in a diverse and meaningful way through my education and my career, while balancing family life and my basic biological imperative to survive, reproduce and be happy".

    We are complex creatures. Maybe we could see the unpaid fees not as debt owing, but as a big load of potential that is out there not being properly utilised - or that they are busy doing remarkable things that don't earn that person a big full time wage.

  • crank :

    01 Feb 2013 4:33:56pm

    Exactly, Jules. As neo-liberal capitalism tends inexorably to neo-feudalism, the elite have no need for educated serfs. The mental work can much more profitably be outsourced to poor world states like India, and graduates in capitalist paradises like the USA and UK no longer gain the high salaries of yesterday. Social mobility in the capitalist states, most particularly in the Anglosphere, is virtually zero. In the USA student debt is over one trillion and greater than credit card debt and one cannot declare oneself bankrupt to escape. Inequality grows like topsy, and median wages are lower, adjusted for inflation, than forty years ago. That is where we are heading as the moral poison of market fundamentalism destroys society, but that is OK, because, as Thatcher bellowed, 'There is no such thing as society', just a bedlam of contending and atomised individuals, engaged in the 'war of all against all', the Right's dreamworld.

  • bob :

    01 Feb 2013 5:06:34pm

    So Amanda was education minister yet she didn't realise that not all uni students are "kids" as she kept repeating. Shows that she really knew her portfolio.

    Also, she must be an advocate of the command economy seeing as she advocates that we educate just enough people for each position (must have a crystal ball), whereas I, a good capitalist, say we should have plenty of unemployed doctors and dentists to keep the cost down as it does with regular grunt workers. Look how cheap arts graduates are ...hah ..hah

    finally, Amanda, please......stop.....talking like.....a politician. You don't need to leave spaces between your words, you have the microphone, no need for sound bites......

  • Stephen Coates :

    01 Feb 2013 11:07:48pm

    The problem with relating tuition fees to the cost of obtaining any specific degree is that the academics spend only part of their time teaching and part of their time doing research. If academics only taught, perhaps 30 hours a week and spent the other 10 familiarising themselves with developments in their field and they did this for 48 weeks a year, tuition would cover costs and then some. I'm not advocating this, but persons making the above comparison must recognise that academics teach only one or two course a semester and each semester covers only about 12 weeks.

    One observation I made when I studied for my first degree was that just about every department that required students to take statistics had its own statistics course, so we'd have Psych 101, Soc 101, Chem Eng 101, etc, ostensibly for scheduling but probably to give Dr. So and So, over the hill to still do serious research in Psychology, Sociology, Chem Eng or whatever something to teach. This not only reduced opportunities for students from different faculties to mix, but was very inefficient. If universities address this and the other structural inefficiencies, cost pressures might be less of an issue.

  • Laura :

    02 Feb 2013 8:19:25am

    I tuned in to ABC RN yesterday whilst Counterpoint was on & seriously thought I was not listening to ABC RN.
    How can you let such an unprofessional broadcaster broadcast? & what 'education' does Amanda Vanstone have that makes her suitable or qualified for this role?

    Amanda's 'concern' about women studying higher education degrees, then possibly only working 2-3 days a week later on in their career when they choose to raise a family infuriated me. The message that came across was that she didn't think women were worthy of higher education if they intended to raise a family later down the track. I don't know where to begin with just how wrong this notion is. Education, for both men & women, has been proven to be of great benefit to the human race, even if we don't always work a 60+ hour week or perhaps use our skills learnt in higher education in another area that isn't exactly our field of study.

    I think we ought to think more about universities as John Stuart Mill described them: 'The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings'

    As Alain de Botton points out 'We have implicitly charged our higher-education system with a dual and possibly contradictory mission: to teach us how to make a living and to teach us how to live. And we have left the second of these two aims recklessly vague and unattended.'

  • dazzled by such pettiness :

    02 Feb 2013 10:34:28am

    because women might have kids, might work part time or not (to raise and take care of them by choice....or very often not (very expensive day care if any...), they shouldn't study ???!!!!
    is that what I seem to understand??

  • Jules :

    05 Feb 2013 11:33:15am

    Quote dazzled":


    Yes dazzled, that's the general idea and ...

    Quote Jane C:


    For Conservatives, the fact that there are people out there with Arts degrees who don't have work demonstrated that they shouldn't have done the degree in the first place.

    The hero of the new right is the self employed Tradie. The former presenters of this show made this point clearly.

    It's amazing to think that there was a time in this country when the Arts, Science and Eduction were held in high esteem. Likewise, school teachers and University lecturers were once highly respected for the work they did.

    Alas, no longer is it the case for either side of politics!


  • jules :

    06 Feb 2013 4:37:52pm

    crank, at least Margaret Thatcher accepted that Climate Change was a reality, all those years ago.

    Come to think of it ... what's happened to the raison d'aitre of Counterpoint eh? There were times when I could have sworn that the entire purpose for setting the show up was to debunk the global warming science.