Real money for TAFE colleges and Universities

Greens NSW Senate candidate Lee Rhiannon today launched her party’s platform for the NSW higher education sector, with a raft of measures to secure the future of publicly owned TAFE colleges and universities (background here).

“Governments need to pay more than lip service to the importance of vocational education and university study,” Ms Rhiannon said.

"Prime Minister Julia Gillard has continued the Howard Government's formula of letting the private sector milk public funds to set up low standard post-secondary education facilities in order to make a profit.

"In many instances this has ended in disaster for students and educational standards.

"Incredibly, Julia Gillard now wants to roll this out in the vocational training sector to replace TAFE.

"The Liberal-National Party Coalition is ideologically committed to allowing the Australian private vocational education and training sector take over TAFE. The Howard years showed they have a complete disregard for publicly funding tertiary education.

 “Under the Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments, TAFE in NSW has lost $572 million from its annual budget, due to federal funding cuts. Programs are being privatised in a race to the bottom in quality and teachers’ pay.

“The Greens are committed to a new deal for TAFE that reflects the crucial role it plays in securing a strong economic future and providing new opportunities for people left behind by structural change.

“Public funding for universities still lags behind the per student levels of a decade ago. It is time to reverse the increase in class sizes, increase salaries, support students and allow the nation’s tertiary institutions to grow in their role as the engine rooms of cultural and economic innovation.

“If elected I will campaign to inject more funds into both TAFE and Universities and end the privatisation of TAFE,” Ms Rhiannon said.

Background - Stopping the privatisation of TAFE

Both the Coalition when it was in government, and Labor have increasingly forced TAFE to compete with lower cost, poorer quality private providers for federal funding.

Much of the delivery of the Language, Literacy and Numeracy Program (LLNP) for the long term unemployed has been hived off to the private sector, with $50 million stripped from NSW TAFE colleges.

This 'contestability' for funding allows private sector providers, motivated by profit, to cut corners and drive down education standards. It also allows the federal government to cut costs and blame falling education standards on private providers.

Over the last ten years, annual federal funds for TAFE in NSW have been cut by $573.5 million in real terms, contributing to the thousands of qualified young people who are being turned away from the courses of their choice.

As a Senator, Lee Rhiannon would work for legislated reform to TAFE funding, including:

• protecting the public nature of TAFE by ending the funding of non-government providers of courses that can be supplied by TAFE;
• restoring per student funding to TAFE to its 1997 levels, adding another $573 million per year in NSW; and
• abolishing all fees and charges for educational services at TAFE institutions.

Ending the squeeze on universities

Australian universities have not only contributed to the nation's wealth out of all proportion to the public resources invested in them.

They have immeasurably enriched the social and cultural life of this nation and have, since the abolition of fees in the early 1970s, provide opportunities for Australians of all backgrounds to progress their earning and engagement in the professions.

Yet successive governments have pushed up student financial contributions, cut funding, undermined the ability of all academics to have a research career and destroyed student unions.

As a Senator, Lee Rhiannon would work to:

• completely reverse the decline in per student hour funding that began under the Howard government. Lee is committed to at least the Bradley report recommendation of a 10% increase on 2007 levels, as a starting point;
• provide each university with a secure funding base to minimise the uncertainty resulting from performance-based funding. Institutions must be able to plan their own futures with some degree of budgetary confidence;
• end Voluntary Student Unionism and restore student control over a reinstated student levy for advocacy and student welfare; and
• abolish fees for educational services at public universities for Australian students and forgive HECS debts and FEE-HELP debt incurred at public universities.