Venassa Busenjack

NSW Branch of the National Union of Students

I have found it a little difficult to think about what exactly I wanted to talk about with regard to access to Higher Education because when we talk about access to Higher Education we can’t see University’s as these little isolated haven’s of where students can just enter and then leave higher education into the work force. We also have to go back to high schools and look at how exactly high schools are segregated within regions around Sydney and how the tertiary entrance rank which then decides who exactly does attend university is very much affected by the type of high schools students do attend and how much money they have whether they can go to a private institution or a public school. So when we talk around arguments about access to education we need to look a bit further than arguments that say merit not money because merit isn’t necessarily reflected by the tertiary entrance rank. Just with regard to the university sector most people here would know about full up front fees which were just recently introduced for local Australian undergraduate students and I guess when we look at full up front fees we need to have a look at it in the context of where the university is actually heading. Back in 1974 we had the Labor Party abolish all tuition fees and we actually saw higher education being expanded to include a lot more students. Now when we have a look at this expansion it can’t be seen in isolation in that we need to have a look at retention rates within higher education and after ’74 which marginalised groups were accessing higher education. And we did see for quite a few years women entering education, we saw a lot of students form lower socio-economic backgrounds entering the higher education sector but now we come to a time in 1998 where we have HEACS for most local undergraduate students, international students have to pay up front fees, now we have 25% over quota up front fees for any local student, we also have postgraduate fees and that is something I would like talk about later. I once read this slogan "education for women’s liberation" and when we talk about education being liberatory we need to look at exactly what we want our education to serve and is it for the social good or is it primarily for the individuals benefit. And I guess that both the ALP and the Liberal Party mainly view education in the light as having a prime individual role and that’s why we see fees for all students now. When we look at education we need to look at curricula, who is that dictates what we do learn in the schools systems is it just a replication of the people who already have power in society who then dictate what we actually learn and this replication actually continues rather than having a look at the intricacies between identity and culture amongst people and for that to be fully explored rather than that being merely tokenistic in that we might have a little studies course within an arts faculty which will probably be cut by 30% but still exist. With postgraduate courses there was a time when students could enter university and be pretty much guaranteed a job, a job that would pay them money and it was worth while and now we have a situation where most students who enter university don’t go into the workforce and get a job they need to go into postgraduate studies. Now when we have a look at postgraduate studies, the whole postgraduate sector has been fully deregulated, universities and institutions charge fees to students, these could be $20,000 per year, they could be $8000 a year but I ask you who is it that can afford these fees, is it people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, is it as a group women who generally get paid lower than men. So I think that we need to have a look at what education is and who’s interests it is serving, is it a site for critical thought or is it a site for us to just become workers that go into business that do not question what they are doing, say for instance ERA who mine up the land, who don’t look at tailing dams, don’t look at how we destroy our environment. So what I would like people to think about once I leave this stage is what do we actually mean by "free and accessible education" is it just about abolishing fees or is it about transforming the university into a site where people can go in there critically think and actually get to meet their lecturers and discuss different ideas rather than those that already stamped within the institution and who is it that gets to challenge these because as a student who attends Sydney University one of those sandstone universities where people think oh how prestigious that it is a university where we are looking at about 25% extra undergraduates attend university and university administration and Vice Chancellors looking to cut staff numbers, looking to increase size of lecture theatres and tutorial numbers. How integrated is this educational experience and is it worth the debt you end up incurring. So maybe we should all think about it a bit more. Thankyou

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