Opinion & Commentary
Amenities return, wrapped in red tape
`Never choose a simple scheme when there is a complex alternative' seems to be the motto of Australian higher education policymakers. The paperwork-intensive plan to restore funding to student amenities announced last week by Youth Minister Kate Ellis suggests that the red-tape machine of the Nelson and Bishop years has survived a change in government.
Under the Ellis plan, three new pieces of red tape will be added.
A fee that was unregulated before the voluntary student unionism legislation will be price-capped at $250. A new income-contingent loan scheme, SA-HELP, will be created to help students pay the fee. For the first time, universities face national regulation on student services, advocacy and representation.
Governments have a long history of fixing prices for universities, but it is a task in which they have not excelled. Teaching funding rates a student have no basis in cost analysis and the $250 student amenities price cap doesn't appear to have one either.
It is well below what many universities used to charge, so it is a decision that students should have fewer non-academic amenities than they did before 2006. No explanation is so far forthcoming as to why $5 a week is an appropriate maximum amount for students to spend on amenities. Although the new student amenities fee is not large, the Government plans a new loan scheme to help students pay for it. SA-HELP is an addition to the four HELP schemes -- HECS-HELP, FEE-HELP, VET-HELP and OS-HELP -- we have already. Four HELP schemes is too many; five is getting ridiculous. Unlike FEE-HELP and VET-HELP, SA-HELP is not extending borrowing eligibility to a new class of people.
Almost everybody who needs to put $250 for amenities on credit will also be taking out a loan for their tuition costs under another HELP scheme. So rather than doubling the HELP bureaucracy for students and universities, why not just increase what students can borrow on other HELP schemes?
The Government's likely answer would be that it wants to quarantine the amenities money. Using HECS-HELP instead, by adding $250 to the various maximum student contribution amounts, would not in itself guarantee extra funding for amenities.
Student contribution amount revenue is discretionary income for universities. Given that the Government is cutting real per student spending by more than 1per cent for 2009, flexibility in how the $250 is used would probably be a good thing. But if the Government is committed to amenities, regulation could be used to redirect money to its intended purpose. Two prices and two loan schemes for what is, in reality, one bundle of services generates needless confusion for students and needless work for university staff.
On top of reserving money for amenities, new regulations on their provision are promised. It is ironic that a plan for national benchmarks and protocols on student services and representation comes so soon after Labor repealed, on light touch regulation grounds, the Coalition's governance protocols and workplace relations requirements.
During parliamentary debate on the repealing legislation, Education Minister Julia Gillard said that ``universities under this Government will be freed from the micromanagement and red tape [that] characterised the approach of the previous government''. If Ellis has her way, this freedom will last only six months. The Senate should reject the added regulation, using everything Labor said about Coalition micromanagement as its justification. The representation protocols would reward Labor students, who often control student associations. Yet the VSU experience confirms what student election results suggest: that most students are at best indifferent to the organisations claiming to represent them. Universities should decide whether funding student representative bodies would add more value than alternative uses of the same money.
Student services benchmarks are also unnecessary. Universities want to provide student services; that's why they opposed VSU and diverted scarce funds to sustain services under VSU. They view non-academic services as part of what they offer students in what is a fairly competitive market. Universities have the information and the incentives to get the mix of services right. The benchmarks are likelier to reduce flexibility and add compliance costs than to improve on the student services universities would deliver without regulation.
It's unfortunate that a month before the Bradley review committee is due to report, Ellis has added to the mess that they need to sort out. Her student amenities initiative is part of a long tradition of ad hoc policies made in response to seemingly isolated problems, without considering their cumulative and systemic consequences.
We can only hope that the Bradley committee has taken a big-picture approach and will recommend fee deregulation and a single loans scheme. If this approach succeeds, Ellis's student amenities plan may be no more than a temporary patch-up before a coherent reform package takes its place.
Andrew Norton is research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.
