Job (Un)Ready

In the spirit of A&U's motto, first to know the nature of things, we acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and waterways which were never seated. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present, and extend our respect to Aboriginal and toouristrate islander peoples listening today. >> Oh, can I tell you, democracy sausages are my favorite [music] meal. They are dulu with no salu. >> Forget about what you've been told by the hate media. >> I'm optimistic. They [music] have the right idea. >> Google it, mate. You're >> such a sick fan. >> This is democracy manifest. >> Good day there and welcome [music] to another democracy sausage. I'm Mark Kenny, director of the Australian Studies Institute at AU. >> And I'm Dr. Maria Taflaga from the School of Politics and International Relations. >> Now, when I say the letters JRG, what do you think of? They stand for job ready graduates. An odious policy created by the last coalition government to preferentially charge some university degrees more and make others cheaper based on well presumably based on the needs of the economy and capacity to pay projected income. It's a it's a range of things. Now it's not very popular. Labour had promised to scrap the policy but guess what? It hasn't. Uh joining us to discuss this from the student perspective are the president of the National Union of Students, Felix Hughes, and the president of the National Union of Students at AU, Charlie Elwood. Welcome to you both. >> Thank you. >> Great to be here. >> Labour said that JRG was unfair, that his job ready graduates was unfair and wrong in principle, but has not got rid of it. Um perhaps Charlie, I'll go to you first on this. uh what's the was there an expectation among students that this was going to be got rid of and and what's the sort of tone of conversation amongst students about what appears to be paralysis on this question? >> I mean absolutely I mean we students expected for it to go when the Labor government came into power. I mean Labor is is a party of education, a party of sort of education policy and I think we we also had an expectation for that to happen. Um so it is certainly disappointing to see it not happen yet. I mean I know there's some mechanics with a tech and stuff that's in there but there was a a general expectation from students that it was going to go in terms of sort of how students are feeling. I mean the most of the cohort that are studying an undergraduate degree now don't know any different don't know what it was like before JRG. So there's almost a bit of an information thing that I think um Felix and I know in kind of student representation we have to we have to tell like a story we have to tell about this is how much you're paying this is how much your older siblings might have paid. Um, and so I think that's certainly something that we're trying to do, but a lot of students don't quite realize just how bad it is until you sort of ask them to go into their ATO and say, "Oh, yeah, here's $50, $60,000. That's a lot of money." Um, and I think some students get very angry about it when they see that. >> Yeah. Felix, do you want to just sort of explain to us what JR is in terms of its logic as far as you understand it? >> Yeah. So JRG was introduced by Scott Morrison um with the intention of driving students to particular degrees um essentially creating demand based off price. So they increase the cost of humanities degrees and commerce degrees and law degrees and decrease the cost of STEM related degrees. Um the idea being marketplace degrees. It didn't work at all. There's been almost no shift in what students are studying. It's essentially just created $50,000 arts degrees for students which is a debt they have no chance of paying off. Um it not only did that though it also decreased the amount of funding universities are getting each year. So you're finding J is one of those very unique issues where students, staff, vice chancellors, chancellors and the entire sector are almost entirely on the same page saying this hasn't worked. it hasn't actually achieved its stated policy objectives which was to increase demand into those STEM related fields and it's left students with tens and tens of thousands of dollars of debt. >> Yeah. And I think the other piece for it as speaking as someone who teaches in a university is that actually the the actual dollar figure going to the STEM degree to teach that student went down as well. So it was it was deeply perverse and um it was a it was a it's been an interesting actual real life experiment um in incentives and a really nice um demonstration of the inalisticity of uh degree choice in demand you know like it's not like two different brands of toothpaste like deciding to become an engineer is very different to deciding to become a lawyer. Yeah, that's right. I mean, that's one of been one of the great lessons of this, hasn't it? That that um you can make a degree, a particular degree more expensive relative to another, but that's not it's a deferred cost for the student. I mean, they're racking up huge debts and coming out of uh of their higher education degrees with, you know, carrying these huge debts, which is um you know, regrettable, but um at the time they're making these choices, they're not making them on the basis of cost. I mean, you're whatever you are, 18 years old and you're thinking about correct. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I chose to study my degree when I when I was leaving high school because I wanted to study it and I no matter I and I I knew what the JRG scheme was. I knew that it had made my degree more expensive, but that didn't change the fact that I wanted to study policy. Like that's that it just doesn't as Marie said, it's it's a completely they're not substitutable goods. Like I'm I I study economics. I did an assignment on this funnily enough last semester that the economic logic is so incredibly flawed that it's sort of almost humorous in in its failure. Like it's it is really really sort of from an economic lens hard to see the rationale behind changing it. >> Maria, is it is it political? [laughter] >> I I think there was a political dimension to this. I don't I don't think it is an accident that um uh arts degrees are now uh extremely expensive. a degree that has traditionally um been you like been taken up by working-class students in particular, but also has produced a type of cultural politics that many within the coalition find uh you know deeply offensive through to you know a danger to the body politic and to western civilization. It's basically a kind of an antipathy towards unions really. Um, sorry. Anty class workers, universities. That's right. I mean, this this this policy um was dovetailed with the coalition's choice at the time during the co pandemic to uh go back to the legislature and to explicitly remove universities from the JobKeeper uh scheme. And it is one of the pieces in the very sorry tale of um the sort of poor state that many universities uh find themselves in right now. >> And and as we began this podcast by making the point for all that and for all the animous directed toward it by Labour halfway through its second term hasn't done anything about it. >> Yeah. So, I mean, I think Felix, you might have a a a sort of you might have uh something to sort of say here, but you know, one of the things that I don't think was anticipated in 22 was that the the government would go about creating this agency called ATH, which seems to be doing industry planning for the universities, and they've given them the job of uh solving JRG, but of course, it doesn't exist yet as a body. >> Yeah. I think a couple thoughts on what you said earlier about the politics of it. Um James Patterson gave a speech at the Ramsay Center recently where he essentially said that conservatives don't see themselves within the humanities departments at universities and he said something was along the lines of he doesn't believe that cabinet at the time would have approved joby graduates that de prioritized humanities if they actually thought they had a stake in what was being taught there and he kind of said I think the quiet part out loud which was >> it was a punishment for the departments that conservatives don't feel welcome in and the idea that students are paying the ice because somehow conservatives don't feel seen in humanities department I think is ridiculous. Some sort of it it seems almost ludicrous to me to say that. Well, >> it's hardly hardly a basis for national policy is it? I mean it's [laughter] it's just not sound in that regard. >> It almost feels like a flashback to student politics like they're still living in this era where [snorts] oh they're not engaged in these [laughter] departments we should punish them. It doesn't feel at all what a government or cabinet should be doing. >> It's not the first time I've heard that about going on in CRA on either side to be honest. Um and as the establishment of a tech, a tech was a really positive step um for our higher education system having an independent body but it's not doing everything we wanted it to. Um we were told throughout the process of establishing a tech that this was the first step in fixing J that Ache setting capacity and that just hasn't been the case. We know that they're doing a piece of work at the moment to investigate what those prices are going to look like 12 months from now, but really it looks like it's kicking the can down the road for us. Um they're doing good work and we know that the chief commissioner Barney Glover has said that it's not going well enough. But and the J has failed, but we're not really seeing that commitment to action from the government still. >> Yeah. And I guess there's the prospect that we could get through two terms of this government. Who knows what happens at the election and nothing will have changed, which is um hardly what you call urgent. There are problems within the policy even if you accepted the policy there are problems within the operation of it. Uh for example with uh Mark Warbertton out of University of Melbourne has written about this in the conversation. He's done a report uh for for the government to consider. We'll talk to him later in the year. Um but um he makes the point for example that uh certain degrees are preferenced with a lower cost you know like teaching and nursing some of these. But if you're a history teacher, then you're not just doing an education learning how to, you know, going to lectures about teaching and about how to be a teacher. You also need to be doing history in which case, you know, you are doing probably an arts degree. Uh, and you are paying, you know, more for that. So, it's it's it's got internal inconsistencies within it. And of course it makes generalizations about the sorts of incomes that people can have down the track arising from their degrees and and some of those assumptions are just that the the as as Walbertton shows are just wrong in terms of earning capacity. How do you guys feel this will impact on your uh life planning and your life choices that you've you've got a debt that um you know someone has uh who was under the original uh hex scheme or a much earlier version of it where the uh rate uh on the interest rate was much lower and it was much more designed to be facilitative as opposed to now like there's been several changes to the structure of the way hex uh the hex debt is calculated which makes it less fair. I mean what is you you sort of said students don't really understand that like the way JRG functions but do they understand like these other changes in the hex system I mean I suppose talk us through the politics a bit more of how this plays out in the student body politic particularly when they're facing other issues as well >> yeah I mean definitely we I mean you know self declare that's one of the things we're trying to do we're trying to educate people how much they are actually paying for their degree because we think it's pretty ridiculous but like by comparison my brother um he did PPE so I do PP and public policy He did PP for those people who don't know PPE, >> uh, politics, philosophy, and economics. Um, the the the glorified arts degree, as I've been told many times, um, he did, >> I think, no need to glorify an arts degree. It's a perfectly solid qualification. >> Um, he so he did PP at the University of Queensland and graduated in 22. Um, he his hex date was 30 grand. Mine already, and I've still got a couple years left, is almost 50. And it's just it's it is a it is a really really scary comparison to look at because when I'm thinking about, you know, later down the track when I eventually, you know, hopefully, fingers crossed, want to look at buying a house and I'm trying to even think about applying for a home deposit while still having 30 grand worth of X to pay off. Well, it's it's just not feasible. Or even when I'm looking at um doing other things like going overseas, wanting to take up further study, doing postgrad, etc., It's just such an incredible uh debt burden which is is a real sort of struggle to to contend with. >> And Felix, did you want to add to that? >> Yeah. Well, I think my debts I checked it the other day was 47 or something um ridiculous for a bachelor's in international relations. Um and I think one of the other parts of it for us is the government talks about fairness and equality, but it is changing what those actual degree cohorts look like. It's decreasing the amount of students who can enroll from low so economic backgrounds. um IU the innovative research universities did a piece of research earlier in the year where they looked at it and said that about 20% of course well there's been about a decrease of 20% in courses that were increased as part of JR um from low economic students um that is I think really confronting um the idea that law law faculties and arts faculties are becoming richer and richer and less representative of a diverse cohort of students And when you're telling students, ah, you're actually paying more for your degree. The students you're able to say that to, it looks different now than it did 5 years ago. You're actually seeing in the classroom less diversity as well as a part of JJ. >> I I think the thing I'd like to kind of um add on or ask you um as well, Felix, is uh you know, it's been a horror time in the sector for the last um couple of years. Um we've seen really significant um scandals. Perhaps the most significant is the revelations coming out of IAC at the University of Wulingong. Um you know and and possible uh you know additional uh actions that might arise from um serious allegations um of corruption um at that university uh and the use of consultants. Uh there's been a number of public inquiries here in the at the Senate uh uh federally and then of course there's one ongoing in New South Wales and one has just uh issued its uh report um in Victoria. I suppose I know you were involved in um submissions to the Victorian inquiry. Um the findings out of that were positive but on the sort of more anodine side uh increasing student and staff representation on university councils but not necessarily dealing with some of the other attendant issues. is I suppose what's your view on where this sort of reform pressure is at and what needs to be done next? >> Yeah, I think there's been a really strong view in the sector for a long time that locking students and staff out of these decision-m bodies means not only are they not represented when those views are discussed, but essentially when those decisions come into effect, students and staff will say, "Oh, this never this never worked." And universities will put up their hand and say, "Oh, we're shocked. This is so surprising to us." Um, and what universities will often result back to is say, "Oh, there's always, you know, one staff, one student member on our university council or academic board." Whereas for a student or staff member who's going into that room alone, it can be really confronting. It can be really intimidating. If you're one student versus 16 adults and as soon as you speak or say something, all of them shut you down. It can be really intimidating. And so I think the recommendation which is to have multiple students in every single one of those rooms is a really good step. It's positive. Um we welcome it. It is not enough. Um I think there's been growing pressure for really rethinking how universities approach their entire model. Universities have been run like corporations for far too long and really they should reenter on why they are there. Who do they serve? Why do they exist? And a big part of that reason is for their staff and students and actually to bring back their public integrity but also the public confidence in universities. The public has to see students and staff represented in those decision-making rooms. I think there was 17 recommendations out of the Victorian Inquiry. A lot of them are really good. A lot of them will have practical impacts for students and staff. Um it didn't go as far as I would have liked. It didn't do everything that we recommended, but it is a positive step in the right direction and that's what we're seeing across the sector. Charlie, you're on a university council. What's it like? >> Oh, wow. Loaded question. Um, oh, I mean, A&U, you know, you mentioned what's happening at the University of Wllingong and IAK and, you know, we've seen at UTS as well. There are so many case studies of universities which have kind of crumbled under the past couple years. Um, sitting on the university council, A&U is actually in a I would say relatively better position than other universities. We have >> You don't hear that often. >> Exactly. Which is which is a you know, it's it's an interesting thing to point out, but we have we have two student members. I'm one of the I'm the undergraduate student member. We have a postgraduate student member and then we have four elected staff members there as well. So there's a total of six um elected members on the council. There are seven appointed and your vice chancellor. It's it is relatively better than what the sector is seeing and I think we can see that play out on the A&U council. I mean there is there's a whole bunch of reporting as to what happened last year and obviously I won't comment on what's happened this year etc. I think it is really really important that as Felix said you have multiple people from those elected cohorts in those rooms because they understand their experience and they're you know they're not there to to represent a particular viewpoint but their lived experience is is incredibly vital and you know as Maria pointed out there are so many times where we see huge major organizational change that comes into effect and then it fails and the university is like oh well how could we have known that was ever going to happen and it's like well if you listen to the students because there's been plenty of times where I have seen both in my position as a council member but also as the union president where a a something will come through and I'll go like oh have you thought of XY Z and the university will go no because they're not students and they don't go through the daily things that students go through. So it's a it seems like a pretty simple concept to have sort of those representative voices and those sort of elected opinions but unfortunately a lot of other universities don't have that same understanding. Um but I think a lot of the the Victorian Inquiry and sort of a lot more of that media pressure will hopefully lead to those changes. My um my university at MES put a submission into the Victorian Inquiry where it essentially said they claimed that there's absolutely no correlation between the number of elected members and better government in general. And they said that the number of elected members doesn't ensure a diversity of opinions, which I think is just living in this crazy alternative reality. And if you say that to an ordinary person, they'll just look at it and go, well, having more voices in the room does increase a diversity of opinions. That is actually just wrong. >> Well, it's just bad social science, too. [laughter] Exactly. >> I mean, given given the the the the number of staff and student elected representatives in Victorian universities is one and sometimes two, there's not that much variation for them to compare to, is there? >> No, that's right. Um, can I just go back to uh so looking at this sort of I suppose in a broader philosophical kind of frame, how do students and this is a question to both of you. How do students feel about the uh the student experience on one side and the cost of education on the other that they are you know is is is this a topic of discussion um you know big student experience does come up a lot we we hear it's not what it was 100% I mean I I talked to my older siblings who went to the university sort of 10 years ago um and it is incredibly different I mean you know again I'd say the A&U is in a slightly better position postco because we have a large amount of on-ampus um students and I think we get a little bit better of a university experience than other universities have but you know I've got friends at other universities in other cities who you know they they'll wake up they'll go into uni they'll go into a tutorial they'll do the tutorial and they'll go home and there isn't really that campus vibrancy and that sort of same um kind of experience that that that people used to have and I think that is going to have an an ongoing effect like we always talk about how you know yes you're university to get your degree but there's also so much more that you do there you meet your friends you you you might um get involved in, you know, god forbid, student politics. Um but I think there is a huge sort of piece of of growing up and developing as a person that university gives you, which is outside of the classroom. And I think that the more that we kind of move into this sort of online learning aspect, the more that we kind of, you know, take away those things, we will then start to see the graduate outcomes suffer as a result. And I mean I've had this conversation with um quite a few academics who teach here about this kind of you know how do we make education accessible but also having the student experience. So it's it's a question that I don't think anyone really has the answer to but it's a really important question. >> Felix, what what are you hearing in your in your n national role as as a leader of student union um in this regard and also not just about what Charlie's talked about but also I suppose about the learning experience specifically. I think there's two parts. So, one of the biggest, if not the single biggest contributor to having a positive, lively student experience on campus is what the role of your student led organization on campus is. Your student union, student guild, student association and actually funding your student union properly as a university means they can put on festivals and events and clubs and societies and free food. And what we're seeing across the country right now is really an orchestrated campaign against the funding of student unions, guilds, and associations. And more and more universities are seeking to undermine that funding, to take away that funding, to establish bodies that are under the universities control. And what that does, it actually has a practical effect on the number of events student unions can run on campus. And the carry on effect of that is students have less live events they can go to, less people they can meet, less club events on campus. And universities more and more, we've probably seen a whole range of universities introduce deputy vice chancellors of student experience of some sort over the last decade. And the things they're doing in the public realm seem to look like they care about student experience, but in the practical effects, they are undermining and defunding the very institutions that can provide student experience. And then on the student learning side, students don't go to university just for learning. They go because they are communities where they want to meet people. And if you go to a class and you leave that class, you don't meet anyone, you don't long friends after, you've got so many students in that classroom that your tutor is never going to learn your name. You really don't feel like you have a sense of belonging at university. And it's no surprise then that after 3 or 4 weeks, you drop out, you don't come back and you do online learning and no one really notices you're not there anymore. No one checks up. You don't get an email saying, "Hey, we haven't seen you around recently." So, it's a multiaceted approach which is having live events on campus, funding a student union, but also having classrooms where the tutor can learn your name in the first place. >> Maria, I'll get your response to that as well. Um, interested in, you know, what what what Charlie and Felix have just said, but we'll do that just after a quick break. >> Welcome back. Now just get your response Maria to to what Charlie and Felix were saying there about the kind of I suppose the student experience in the various dimensions of both learning but also that community side the affection I I think that uh you know ideally exists between student and university and stays with them for life. Is that under threat? >> Oh yeah I think absolutely it's under threat. You know, a lot of um people my age or older will remember their university days as as the place where they met their they found their people, you know, they met their lifelong friends in a lot of cases and sometimes, you know, they met their life partner. So, it's it's hugely formative and there's a there's a real romanticism around um the university, but that is not necessarily the experience of what it's like to be um a student today and nor is it sort of the experience of what it's like to be a lecturer today. I mean you know as someone who is in a large uh sort of teaching faculty um you know class size like there is there is simply less resources and so the classes are bigger and um I think last year was the first year that I actually just gave up on potentially learning my students names cuz I had 200 of them in this class um and it was just not going to happen. Um and that was really depressing. Um and it really sort of uh was a sort of signifier of how the kind of relationship has sort of changed because you know as an instructor with the current funding available we we're making choices around um you know do we do we have smaller group sizes or do we have like better marking um and so these things are all impacting the way in which students are experiencing their learning getting the opportunity to engage with me. I think one of the things I've noticed that's been actually really most troubling to me in the last few years is the number of students that write, "Oh, I know you are busy." Um, like students have in the past never cared about my time. Um, but the fact that they know to say that um is like of course I am busy, but like that's beside the point. Like I am also paid to to do this job and to interact with them. And so I thought that was that was a really um that was a really strong red flag for me that something in the body politic of students, their understanding of the stress that the institution even if they can't fully articulate it is under um is is readily apparent in the way that they are interacting um you know um with with staff uh and you know it's got to be a less uh rich experience as a result. Yeah, it just strikes me that there's this sort of um you know there at the surface level there's a different approach uh advocated by the let's call them the two major hemispheres of politics but in practical terms there's not much that is all that different I mean we saw um through co as you've already mentioned the university sector was specifically left out of JobKeeper basically the logic was oh you got plenty of money you'll survive kind of thing um this exacerbated added structural problems and has left a considerable tale. And some of the things you've just been talking about in terms of class sizes and the number of resources and the cost pressures in within universities. All of these things were kind of highlighted but have not been recovered from uh adequately since the since then uh since the pandemic. uh and is it sort of a kind of a general paralysis it feels like in this policy space you know and it's kind of it's kind of bilateral >> well this sector I think is politically more friendless than others um you know and that's and that's like to bring a political science lens to it you know that's a reflective of uh uh the position of the sector in like one in the Australian economy and and two the interests that are aligned to it and and vote for it um and So, you know, I mean, I think Labour has always sort of been uh interested in universities, um but it's not exactly a vote winner to be seen championing them. Um when the sort of dominant political discourses are culture wars and cost of living uh crisises. So, that's like definitely part of it. If you look at uh his sort of historical trends, I mean it took Labor till its third term under Hawk to really uh like deal with uh universities in in that uh under that government as well like once again like reflecting the specific needs but also the the interest sets um involved. And I mean I think the the the thing I would add about um the you know the way resources are reaching staff and students like that is not just a question of government funding that is also a question of how universities are choosing to allocate those funds and what they're choosing to prioritize. It's like it's a two it's a twoart yeah it's a two-part problem and we shouldn't you know I think um I think a lot of the time um like politicians um depending on their political stripe might want to sort of emphasize that it's about public funding and that's the issue and then there might be others who sort of say well it's about internal governance but it's actually a co-production like not having enough money makes the pressures on internal governance or its weaknesses readily visible in a way that when you have lots of money it's all above the waterline line. You can't really see how many barnacles are on the ship underneath it. Um, for example, but you know, this is this is a sector that is facing um like it's had a se several shocks. Some of them induced by global events, some of them induced by government policy, which has actually been reflected in other Westminster countries around the world. Like we've seen most of them retreat from international students. The model is changing. But we've also facing um artificial intelligence like universities are at the cutting edge of this um issue around like how to like it's called secure assessment in the um in the uh in the jargon coming down. Um but you know the the flip side of that is um like how do we ensure that um like yeah how do we ensure that you've learned something as students but also like how do we give you a good experience as well right? So it's it's that you so so I >> and you could probably add one other level into it. There's been a problem of uni university governance and um and you know kind of a a cultural problem across the sector I would say uh which goes I think Charlie you started off making this point about sort of accountability within within the university system. Um there have been some shortcomings there. uh and this is one of the criticisms that the Morrison government made about it and probably the current government has about it um in terms of uh you know universities being a kind of a a law unto themselves. I mean, you made some good points about levels of representation here, which is good. Um, but transparency and and kind of, I suppose, a kind of uniqueness that universities have within the the overall economy has led to when some of these problems have come to light. It turns out they've come to light at a whole range of different institutions. There are quite common problems here and they're associated with accountability, insularity, [clears throat] >> lack of transparency, sense of cultural self-importance perhaps. [laughter] >> Yeah, I mean definitely I mean there were so many points that Marie made earlier which were fantastic as always, but there was the point you made earlier about um you know governments benefit from being able to blame the universities, universities benefit being being able to blame the government sense which is this constant sort of tennis match of of blame and who's really at fault. But I think universities should be the the best model of governance. I mean, universities should be the ones who are who don't face the same sort of profit pressures that private corporations make. And so we should have the best governance models. I I think that's a pretty sort of uncontroversial take. And I think it's time that we start to model that rather than being at corruption inquiries. >> I mean, Felix, do you think one of the challenges is that students sort of cycle out of university like into university and out of university quite quickly? I mean, is that part of the issue? Yeah, often we won't know what the system was like five years ago and five years before that and five years before that and students who come into university just take it and say oh this is normal we should accept this whereas what we're dealing with right now as a sector is not normal there is nothing about it that is normal when you talk to people who graduated 10 years ago they look at it and go this is this is just not what we experienced and it's accumulated I think in the postco era post job ready graduates to a period where universities don't think of students as partners. They don't think of us as part of their community. To them, we are a stakeholder. We are a stakeholder. We managed to be consulted with. And I think universities have really lost track of who they actually there to serve. And from that, the public trust and public confidence in our universities is at an all-time low. And trust and confidence in our universities is so important to our democratic system to actually having a population that goes to university, gets educated, has good jobs. and the long-term impacts of having low trust in universities if it doesn't get fixed I think is immeasurable. >> I mean I think it's kind of important for uh like listeners to understand that some of these policies that were set in train in the near the early 2000s uh by the Howard government under Brendan Nelson. Um, and like the shorthand you could use for that is like there was an introduction of corporate style governance but without necessarily the same buffers that corporations face in terms of >> having to do annual meetings and reports to shareholders and all that sort of stuff. >> Well, that's right. That's right. And and it's a sort of system that has slowly drifted um from >> that was always a mismatch, right? I mean culturally and and and and sort of organizationally didn't it didn't those two systems didn't map onto each other properly. >> No. And I think I think it's actually no surprise that we we are um where we are today. Um the other week I saw um I was walking past the A&U student pantry and the line outside of this building was long. Um and I believe it was about to open and it it just it really underscored for me um uh you know that we are living in a cost of living crisis and students are famously not wealthy. Uh so what what is what is what is the reality for um students right now? >> I'm I'm so glad you asked. I was looking for the right opportunity to to talk about the Union Pantry. You really just, you know, given me the the assist there. So I appreciate that. Um yeah, I mean it it's it's it's really really hard to be a student. I mean we are we are facing so many different pressures um from a million different directions and you know from a union perspective we are seeing that. I mean, our union pantry, we opened it last year. Originally intended to do once a week about 50 students. Um, you know, just an extra little bit of support. We then doubled it and then we tripled it and then we increased the capacity and we're still seeing a registration form fill out in 2 minutes to the point where we're having to implement a new system to try and get more students in a much sort of fairer way. So, we like it is the demand for our services this year in particular have just skyrocketed. And I think that is it goes a lot to say about the kind of student poverty crisis that we're facing. Um and the biggest proportion of representation that we see in those cohorts are from postgraduates are from PhD students. I mean we know about the PhD stipend crisis and placement poverty and all those different things. And it it is significantly hurting students. Um and I think it it's a disincentivization for students who are in undergraduate degrees seeing what's happening in a postgrad PhD. Like I I want to do research later in later in my life >> but it's quite hard to kind of justify it from a financial lens if I won't be able to afford it. So yeah, students are facing pressures from every different direction um more so than the general population because we don't have as much time to work because we have to study and we should be able to study. It it strikes me it's a it's a it's such a difficult area to to sort of just make blanket policy for and and to apply the sorts of normal tests or or uh metrics that we put on uh and restrictions and opportunities that we put on normal businesses because it's so I mean it's so tidal in term you know we have semester breaks we have summer breaks you know the if you were if you were running a cafe on the campus and I'm thinking now of a kind of private license holder that that operate cafes and other businesses on campus. These things they're paying rent for, but they're really actually quite hard when you get into these semester breaks. And even sometimes, I mean, I was um recently I move around universities a bit and I was recently spent a good part of an afternoon uh cuz I was doing some work down at the University of Melbourne and you know, I was sitting in this cafe for a while writing something. Um I was probably there for 2 hours and the joint was pretty well mostly empty. Um, and you know, they got a couple of staff in there and they were very helpful and all that sort of stuff. Um, so I can see how difficult that is. That's one aspect of it. The university is looking to make income out of the um, you know, the shop fronts that that it can rent out and and so forth. And then you've got the students themselves who are, as you say, dealing with, you know, they're in a lowinccome part of their lives by definition. Um, they're full-time students for the most part. And so this is a this is a these are sort of dynamics that don't go to go well together and and make for a for an easy situation. And I guess in the past universities have [snorts] dealt with that differently. You know they've they've not had so many private operators on on the campus and they have as you were saying Charlie funded student unions to um to provide a lot of these activities. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean certainly the >> and services >> that we we're simply just meeting the the demand that students are telling us they need. I mean we we aren't inventing these new things to to try and sort of manufacture demand to make ourselves look better that we don't have a incentive to do that. We're purely doing it because we we see students walk in the door and say, "I'm struggling with this, this, and this." And we're simply just trying to support them. And we are now, as as Felix sort of said, we are continually facing funding issues with student organizations where if we continue to lose funding from the university because they are taking it away from genuine studentled organizations to sort of pseudo studentled organizations where there's sort of a student board, but it's operationally led by professional staff or has university appointees, etc. If we continue to see that, you will continue to see sort of organizations try and meet the demand for students but fail because they are not students. And I think that, you know, Felix's point is absolutely correct. We need to keep funding student unions to do the work that they do and to play the role that they play in universities, which is, you know, in the same way that the staff union and the NGU does is to pressure the university to respond to the needs of their community. >> Felix, >> I think what Charlie said is exactly right, and it's unfortunately not unique to A&U. It is representative of the entire country. It's happening at every university right now. We're hearing stories quite literally every day of students that are going to class without eating breakfast, going days without eating, working two, three, four jobs just to get by. Um, Universities Australia did a bit of research recently where they looked at student income and student expenses since the start of job graduates and they did a report that found the cost of maintaining a basic student standard of living has increased 29% since J was introduced which is well above the economywide inflation rate of 24%. But in that same period what students are spending increased by just 21%. They just don't have the disposable income to match the rise in inflation for student expenses. They just don't have the money. And a big part of that conversation is then the government's role in actually not just supporting students but actually making sure they can thrive at universities. And that's policies like paid practice which were recently expanded but still isn't as expanded as it should be. It's things like youth allowance which still sits below the poverty line. Sorry to cut you off there but just on paid practice just just explain that that's that's the the where where students are required to do practical placements somewhere they can be paid for that. >> Yes. So typically what happened is students would be required as part of their degree to go on mandatory placement. So if you're a nursing student, you'd be required to go sometimes >> completely change where you're living, go to say the regions and go and during that period not get paid but also have to provide food, travel, accommodation. And you see these really horror stories of students that are living in tents in that period. horror stories of students that just go I know one case in the last few weeks of a student who was uh in a nursing home and ate food well was reported for stealing food after they ate the remainder of food that a patient had eaten um after they were going to put in the trash cuz they just couldn't afford to eat. And it's this really horrific world we're living in where students are being punished for eating scraps out of garbage because as part of their degree to pass their degree in the first place they need to go move home for period of weeks or months and not have any financial assistance. So the comworth paid Payment is a subsidy where students will get some cash if they go on a placement. It's not enough money. It's not eligible to every student. It's nowhere near uh covering every degree. Um, but it is good for the students that can access it and we do support it. Um, and then beyond that, the other important one which I touched on, Charlie's touched on is obviously funding of student unions which I think goes back about 20 years from now to the introduction of voluntary student unionism by John Howard in 2006 where the welfare of students, the support of students got presented as a choice. And I think when you look at all these government fa governance failures and these failures in welfare support and cost of living support, it really traces back to that period where it was presented as if student unions are the enemy and as if student support is an afterthought and where student unions are somehow, oh yeah, they're good if if we have time, if we have the money, they're fine. Um, and really this whole discourse that we're experiencing now, I don't think would be the case if 20 years ago that hadn't happened. I don't think we'd be facing a governor's crisis right now if student unions for the last 20 years had the resources to campaign against universities when they screwed up and actually had the financial capacity to campaign actively every single time a university oversteps. >> What did you hear um when uh hex debt or a proportion of hex debt was forgiven by the government uh before the last election? Um how popular was that amongst students or is it or does that seem abstract to many people? It's quite a it's a a very unique one. It's a good policy that I support and I think it's really good and I want to be I want it to expanded. I want all Hexept to get wiped, but it actually [laughter] doesn't help students. Um it does not help a current student in any way, shape or form. Um it doesn't help us with the cost of living expenses. It doesn't help us with rent or food. And when you look at a student that was in their first and second year of university who's just incre seen these massive increases job graduates, it does nothing for them. They maybe at the time had a $6,000 hex debt. Cool. They now have $4,000 hex debt. They weren't repaying that to begin with because they're not earning enough. They can't eat breakfast every day. Like the discourse around that 20% hex cut is so disconnected from the lived experiences of students on the ground. And I'm sure you know it helped people who've left university, but it's really doing nothing now for students that are coming into university the first time or when their first or second year. >> Yeah, I mean it was a it's a welcome policy. Any sort of debt relief is a really welcome policy. I know a lot of it I think the messaging around it really worked as well. Like a lot of students did actually realize and notice the the big cut, but it doesn't structurally change the cost of the degree in the first place. It doesn't sort of structurally change the the the way that the the repayments are made. Like it's it's it's a it's a one-off. It's it certainly helps, but again, universities aren't in crisis because of one-off policy decisions. It's sort of a real structuring withering away of financial support which has got us gotten us to this mess. >> And it's a policy that I mean, it can't be lost on uh people that uh is is championed by or has been championed in the past by people who had the benefit of a entirely free university education, of which I was one. >> Certainly not lost. Um so uh presumably we're not going back to that utopian world. Um but there are other models that could be looked at for this. Um the idea for example of a a sort of a a flat fee uh you know a flat one based on an average cost right across all degrees at a relatively low level which may then have um which may then be varied by relatively small amounts. If you're going into a profession that is on average say earns 1.4 1.3 times average wage or average income of university graduates that you you would pay. So let's say it was $10,000. This is what Walbertton has uh proposed as one idea. Uh you would end up paying instead of $10,000 you would pay $13,000 if you were at 1.3. And if you were in a profession that was or an occupation that from a degree that was likely to be under that then you would pay 08 say rather than 10,000 you pay 8,000 um this kind of thing at a much much lower level. That's one way of doing it. So it doesn't discriminate on the basis of degrees per se. Um I don't know whether whether this sort of model is is going to be taken up by the government in the future but clearly uh clearly there's not a lot of happiness about the way it works at the moment. I think my the N US is a big advocate that universities and education should be a public good accessible to everybody and that the conversation and dialogue around self-funding your way through education is in the first place broken and really if we have a world-class education system that education system would be free. It would be if we had an education system that was accessible to every student that didn't leave students with decades of debt. you'd be talking about how do we make university free in this country, not how do we shift it from $50,000 to $20,000. And that's I think a big thing that's part of this. >> Yeah. What do you think, Maria? I mean, it's called a higher education contribution scheme and that was the logic of it that students made a contribution to their education. >> What do I think about Hex? M uh I think hex in its initial original form was a a a reasonable policy compromise for what was um a desire to get some of this uh need off the off the books. I think the way it it has uh changed and morphed over time um has not is it doesn't serve the public interests as such and it doesn't serve um the individual sort of students uh involved. I mean I think you know the government has kind of indicated that it is looking to harmonize whatever this means um the sort of entire higher education um sort of system including TA um like bring like having one door into higher education. It's not really clear what this will actually mean for any of um these sectors but we do sort of see that governments um from time to time will make TA free for example. So you do sort of see a a differentiation. Part of that is is related to the overall lifetime earnings of the potential recipients of this. But I don't know. I mean from a logic perspective it seems um that a simpler way to approach that is just to manage that through the taxation system. Yeah. um you know down the line. Um because of course plenty of people end up with uh hex debts that they you know they never go on to practice in their uh degree or they actually far worse they drop out of university and they've got a debt >> and it sits there and um you know they're not necessarily earning what a lawyer would earn um at the higher end I might add cuz you know plenty of people with law law degrees actually don't go on to use that degree and they don't earn very much either. So I think there's there are like there are lots of um sort of dimensions uh to this but I think we do need to sort of think about what is the purpose of our higher education system and I think so much of the discussion uh at least from sort of university kind of leaders university Australia and stuff like that like it really doesn't talk about um students or the public good uh enough um you know these are public institutions is largely funded by public money. Uh we are going through um a series of profound changes and crisises. um you know I know this is very self-interested to say but we we need our universities and we need them to be focused on the public mission you know um rather than um like trying to understand universities as a business because it's not really a business in the same way and when it is a business you know your experience is margin which should be squ sc squ sc squ sc squ sc squ sc squ sc squ sc squ sc squ sc squ sc squunched down >> what about if we take some of the money that's going to privileged private schools and we say well you know you've got a you got a a license for how much money you can have spent on you as a student from reception to the end of your degree. And it can either be in in subsidies. >> Well, I think that would be a better use of public >> subsidizing your university or you can subsidize the uh you know the Olympic size pool at your private school. Um and uh but you can't have both, you [laughter] know. What about that? >> Yeah. I mean I mean I think I mean Maria's point is is is really good. I think we we do really really need to think very very critically about what role universities play in our society. like they are again we we're we're all in universities so there's a bit of bias here but you know they they are places of knowledge they are places where we come up with solutions to some of the hardest questions and there are innumerable questions at the moment around um AI taxation everything that which realistically universities can answer if we actually invested in them and I think if you if you make the comparison to a huge you know one of the most monumental policy things in in Australian history Medicare it was introduced under the logic of Medicare should be accessible for All because when the population is healthy, the country is healthy and there is benefit there. The same logic can be applied to education. When the population is smart, the country is smart. When we are when we have millions of students across the country given access to education and given access to the benefits of the university experience that we spoke to earlier, the population benefits from that. And I think that the government needs to sort of think very very critically about, you know, they talk about inter intergenerational quality all the time. Well, this is a perfect example where we can come in, reform a sector that is really, really broken and then 20 years down the track, we will really really get the benefits of that. >> Brilliantly said. Brilliantly said and a good uh a good note on which to end this conversation. Uh Felix and Charlie, thanks so much for joining us with Democracy Sausage. It's been really terrific to get this perspective uh on on on here and something that I'm glad we've done and we'll we'll have a look at this issue again and uh uh no doubt um be hoping to see some sort of action. My my tip is that there will be some action on this before the next election. >> Perhaps [laughter] >> perhaps only just before it. I don't know. >> That is democracy sausage for this week. Um thanks for listening and uh we'll see you again talk to you again next week.