For more UMPA news and information go to: http://www.umpa.unimelb.edu.au
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UMPANEWS SPECIAL EDITION 24 JUNE
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POSTGRADUATE COURSE FEES SET TO RISE
* UP TO 57% INCREASE FOR 2003 COMMENCING STUDENTS
* FEES FOR ONGOING STUDENTS TO BE INDEXED 3% P.A. FROM 2005
* MORE FEE RISES TO COME IN FUTURE
* WHAT WOULD THE FEE RISES MEAN?
* HOW SHOULD UMPA RESPOND?
**** This is an important bulletin from UMPA. It contains information of interest to all current and future postgraduate coursework students. Please circulate this to your colleagues if they are not already subscribed to UMPAnews. ****
UMPA has previously advised that fees for postgraduate coursework students are likely to rise sharply in 2003 and beyond. The University's Planning and Budgets Committee (chaired by the Vice-Chancellor) has recommended the University's steadily increasing fees revenue targets be met by increased fees. Increased fees have been preferred to increased enrolments.
If the University Council, meeting at 4.00pm in the Old Law Quadrangle on Monday 1 July, adopts these proposals then they will take effect for students starting courses in 2003.
University management has not posted the proposed fees on the University website yet, although it is not confidential information. UMPA believes this is important information for members. The proposed fees shall be available on UMPA's website by Wednesday. Here are some examples:
* Fees in five Science Faculty courses would rise 57%, from $8400pa to $13200pa.
* Fees in all Law Faculty courses would rise 25% (except the Juris Doctor, already Australia's most expensive course, which would rise 8.3%, up from $36000pa to $39000pa).
* A few courses in some faculties face negligible rises, but most fee rises are significantly over inflation.
Additionally, from 2005, all continuing students will face fee rises of at least 3% as 'indexation.' Students taking Postgraduate Education Loans Scheme (PELS) loans should be aware that their debts are also indexed according to inflation. University management appears unwilling to
investigate the student debt implications of its proposals, arguing that it is a very difficult task.
The fee rises are driven by growing fee revenue targets. In 2001 the University's target was $110m; in 2002 it is $138m; in 2003 it shall be $172m; in 2004 it shall be $203m. The rationale for these increases is that they are needed to pay for staff salary rises. This is principally a political strategy, to win staff support for fee rises that would be harmful to students.
The fee rises would mean the University would continue to deteriorate in its performance against social justice criteria. Melbourne is already far below state and national averages in providing postgraduate education to socially disadvantaged groups. Melbourne's stated aim to be an elite educational institution will lead to an increasingly exclusive socio-economic clientele. In the next week, UMPA shall publish a report by Rosemary Chang on financial barriers to postgraduate coursework. Titled 'How Can We Afford All This?', its release could not have come at a more
pointed moment.
The fee rises would not mean guarantees of improved quality for the students who pay them. Importantly, there is no guarantee that fee rises will improve the staff/student ratios for fee paying courses, even though that is the only educational reason offered for the fee increases. The
University's track record on quality in postgraduate coursework is extremely inconsistent, as management and senior academics have acknowledged. Without concrete guarantees that quality will improve, how can a fee rise of 57% be justified?
It is no coincidence that these massive fee rises are proposed in the first year of PELS. PELS makes it easier for universities to raise fees, while the federal government now has an incentive to let them (inflation means PELS debts actually improve the government's budget bottom line: more PELS loans give the appearance of a better budget).
UMPA will protest these proposals to University Council. In the event that Council adopts these proposals (this Council has not yet refused a policy proposal from this Vice-Chancellor), UMPA would continue to keep members informed, and to seek your opinions on how to respond.
If you wish to make your feelings known (in a public yet suitably postgraduate fashion), you may wish to join UMPA representatives outside the Council Chambers at 3.40 next Monday. Alternately, you may wish to write to the Chancellor and ask that she report your views to the Council when it discusses these matters - mailto:[email protected].
If you wish to make your views known to UMPA, please contact the Coursework Officer, Robyn Finken, at mailto:[email protected]
and/or UMPA's President, Ersa Wahyuni, at mailto:[email protected].
We are your association. Please let us know how you wish to be represented on these matters.
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