2015-05-25
Ben Moroney and Eliza June (Australian Young Greens Co-Convenors)
The Liberal government is proceeding unabated with its neoliberal program for Australian education, and maintaining what we have is going to be the main focus of any education campaign run this year.
However, it's important not to let ourselves lose sight of a progressive vision for tertiary education, beyond defending it from neoliberal assaults.
In The Common Good, Noam Chomsky wrote, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” Sadly, the education debate in Australia has become a strictly limited spectrum, a dichotomy between the policy of open-slather deregulation of the Liberals and the current system of student debt and demand-driven entry. In attacking deregulation and defending the status quo, we implicitly approve of a system that locks students into tens of thousands of dollars of debt and corporatises our university sector, driving them to become little more than corrupt degree mills. It is often forgotten that, 40 years ago, Australia was not only talking about free education, we introduced it.
The concept of free education was not new in Whitlam's time — it had already been explored by a number of post-war European Social Democratic and Labour governments, particularly Germany, the UK and Norway. And now, despite having undergone significant liberalisation and marketisation of their tertiary sectors in the 80s and 90s, countries like Germany, Norway and Finland have moved back to the free education model, Germany the most recent with the state of Saxony having abolished tuition fees entirely.
The concept of free education, despite the derisive cries of the right (and, frankly, a large part of the nominal Australian left) is not simply based in a desire to have hard-working taxpayers fund our flights of fancy.
Education is a well-recognised social good, with Australian studies showing annual rates of return from public investment in education of anywhere from 10% to 21%, through a combination of increased productivity, innovation and the development, implementation and export of new technologies, as well as a greater understanding of our own society and the requisite development of better policy and better governance structures. It is of direct financial benefit and indirect progressive benefit to society to finance higher education, just as it benefits society to pay for primary and secondary schooling. Yet, despite the clear, objective benefits of education investment, the argument still continues about the best way to shift the costs onto students — about which form liberalisation of our education system should take.
As progressives and as Greens, we must not only make a strong case to the public against the deregulation of universities, but we must also make the case for education as a public good. While Labor remains wedded to the Hawke era of university reforms, decrying the amounts of student debt, but not the concept, we must be leading the conversation about the public good of education and why placing costs on students, far from guaranteeing efficiency, only turns the minds of tomorrow away from their potential.
This year, the Young Greens will be leading the charge on free education, organising and rallying to ensure that the conversation does not just default to which neoliberal market is best.
Education is a right, not a privilege; it is a social good, not a cost. As the world slowly goes through the growing pains of the next industrial transition to clean energy and as Australia attempts to strike its way in the fledgling global knowledge economy, an educated, innovative workforce will become not only beneficial, but essential. We've proven in the past that we can do this, that when we invest in our minds we are capable of punching well above our weight in science, cutting-edge industry, social research and the creative arts.
All we need is the political will. We invite you to be part of the campaign.