Vale Gough Whitlam
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
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There are many things wrong with such a scheme, Jezza, but I'll list only three:
Economic sense
Graduates earn more, on average, and so they pay more tax. Graduates already pay a lot more tax (on average) than non-graduates, and that extra tax they pay because of their higher average incomes is way, way more than enough to pay for their university courses.
Graduates also contribute more to the economy in other ways - they don't just earn more in take-home pay, graduates produce more and save more. Graduate engineers design better bridges than untrained people, graduate scientists invent things that make their employers pot loads of money, and so on.
Thirdly, graduates contribute more on average to society in many ways beyond the narrowly economic: graduate nurses provide better quality health care; trained journalists are better at reporting the news; social science graduates bring a better understanding of society to the people they interact with; citizens with more education live longer, healthier lives and are less likely to be drug addicts or criminals - education, in short, is a good thing in itself.
Fairness
Your scheme discriminates against non-wealthy people because prospective students from poor backgrounds are far more likely to be discouraged by the cost of an education. Worse than this, it discriminates heavily against women because female graduates earn considerably less over their lifetimes than male graduates but they are charged the same huge university fees. How is that fair?
Quality of education
Finally and worst of all, your scheme - as proposed by the odious Pyne and championed by the ludicrous Hockey - heavily discriminates against fields of study which do not lead to the graduate earning large amounts. Fields of study which lead to very well-paid occupations - many of them semi-useless parasitic occupations in socially near-valueless arenas like real estate, tax-dodging (sorry, I mean tax accounting), stockbroking, corporate law, financial "advice", and so on - students are pretty much forced into these high-paid fields because otherwise it's too hard to pay off the loan.
Students are heavily discouraged from taking on courses leading to less well-paid career paths because the eventual cost to them is just too high - the spectre of the massive loan repayments forces them away from anything that doesn't pay especially well. This is particularly so for students from non-wealthy families. In short, Pyne's policy is an attempt to make it difficult or impossible to go to university to study anything other than the sort of selfish money-grab occupation people like Pyne tend to gravitate towards. The really useful occupations and courses - the ones that benefit society the most - get strangled. Think about it: most of the really important vocations are poorly paid relative to things like stockbroking and real estate. These include practically all scientists, all of nurses, mathematicians, primary teachers, infant welfare specialists, policemen, historians, social scientists, artists, drug and alcohol counselors, midwives, youth workers .... the list of things Pyne plans to make impossible to study unless daddy is rich is very long indeed. It is a viciously evil policy and once you understand the long-term consequences of it you'd have to be as vicious and stupid as Christopher Pyne himself to support it.
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Jezza 
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Joined: 06 Sep 2010
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| Tannin wrote: | There are many things wrong with such a scheme, Jezza, but I'll list only three:
Economic sense
Graduates earn more, on average, and so they pay more tax. Graduates already pay a lot more tax (on average) than non-graduates, and that extra tax they pay because of their higher average incomes is way, way more than enough to pay for their university courses.
Graduates also contribute more to the economy in other ways - they don't just earn more in take-home pay, graduates produce more and save more. Graduate engineers design better bridges than untrained people, graduate scientists invent things that make their employers pot loads of money, and so on.
Thirdly, graduates contribute more on average to society in many ways beyond the narrowly economic: graduate nurses provide better quality health care; trained journalists are better at reporting the news; social science graduates bring a better understanding of society to the people they interact with; citizens with more education live longer, healthier lives and are less likely to be drug addicts or criminals - education, in short, is a good thing in itself.
Fairness
Your scheme discriminates against non-wealthy people because prospective students from poor backgrounds are far more likely to be discouraged by the cost of an education. Worse than this, it discriminates heavily against women because female graduates earn considerably less over their lifetimes than male graduates but they are charged the same huge university fees. How is that fair?
Quality of education
Finally and worst of all, your scheme - as proposed by the odious Pyne and championed by the ludicrous Hockey - heavily discriminates against fields of study which do not lead to the graduate earning large amounts. Fields of study which lead to very well-paid occupations - many of them semi-useless parasitic occupations in socially near-valueless arenas like real estate, tax-dodging (sorry, I mean tax accounting), stockbroking, corporate law, financial "advice", and so on - students are pretty much forced into these high-paid fields because otherwise it's too hard to pay off the loan.
Students are heavily discouraged from taking on courses leading to less well-paid career paths because the eventual cost to them is just too high - the spectre of the massive loan repayments forces them away from anything that doesn't pay especially well. This is particularly so for students from non-wealthy families. In short, Pyne's policy is an attempt to make it difficult or impossible to go to university to study anything other than the sort of selfish money-grab occupation people like Pyne tend to gravitate towards. The really useful occupations and courses - the ones that benefit society the most - get strangled. Think about it: most of the really important vocations are poorly paid relative to things like stockbroking and real estate. These include practically all scientists, all of nurses, mathematicians, primary teachers, infant welfare specialists, policemen, historians, social scientists, artists, drug and alcohol counselors, midwives, youth workers .... the list of things Pyne plans to make impossible to study unless daddy is rich is very long indeed. It is a viciously evil policy and once you understand the long-term consequences of it you'd have to be as vicious and stupid as Christopher Pyne himself to support it. |
All valid points Tannin. I must admit I haven't looked at it completely from the perspective that you've demonstrated here. I think I'm guilty of only looking at the financial affordability of actually attending university and studying in a particular course rather than the long-term effects it may have beyond university attendance.
Also what's with the use of the word 'your'. It's not my scheme, it's the Hawke government's scheme that was introduced in the late 1980s and has been continually used throughout that time under Keating, Howard, Rudd, Gillard and now Abbott.
By the way what did you make of Paul Keating's speech from 1995 if you don't mind me asking?
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Sadly, PK's biggest blind spot was projecting his own peculiar family-and-near-network-based education on the rest of the country. He was never educated formally at tertiary level, and was guilty of thinking everyone could have a family as stable and intellectually curious and encouraging as his own, and thus come out of young adulthood with an extensive working grasp of the world.
He was then mollycoddled by the intellectual ALP, and drank up everything around him from people who were educated by the very same system he underrated.
We all have blind spots, Jezza, and most of the time you'll find they come from projections based on personal sore points. Forget Keating's personal views, focus on the real world empirical facts. The bloke has more than proven his point as an informally-educated person; however, at the time he was making policy not even he would've realised just how strongly he had proven his point.
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Cheers Jezza, I haven't had time to look at that yet - been super-busy here of late and very little opportunity for visiting Nick's - but I'll make a point of watching it a little later. (Keating's speeches are always good fun - no-one in politics these days has his verbal gifts.)
I accept your disclaimer and withdraw my "your".
HECS was indeed introduced by Hawke - the best Liberal Prime Minster in living memory - and it was a retrograde step. However, it was modest in scale and didn't do all that much harm. It also was indexed to the rate of inflation so that in real terms you repaid the exact same amount you committed to, not a penny more. Pyne is trying to change that.
Much, much worse, he is massively increasing the cost of going to university, so that you are not only looking at a significant interest burden, it is on a vastly larger amount. Typically dishonest, he talks about these massive fee increases as "deregulation", not as the huge cost impost they are. The long-term effects will be very bad for this country.
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| pietillidie wrote: | | Sadly, PK's biggest blind spot was projecting his own peculiar family-and-near-network-based education on the rest of the country. He was never educated formally at tertiary level |
I didn't know that, PTID. However, as a minor point, I do know that Keating went to a very, very good school. Given the outstanding quality of his secondary education, lack of a tertiary education would not have been as much of a handicap for him as it would have been for someone attending a more typical secondary school. It's not unreasonable to view his formal education as being midway between a typical secondary and a typical tertiary one - those old-style selective high schools for bright and gifted children were superior not just to normal high schools but to even the most expensive private schools (which could afford the very best teachers and equipment and certainly had a lot of gifted students but ultimately selected their intake according to daddy's money rather than the student's ability and application).
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Jezza
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It's a transcript, not a video Tannin.
I'm pretty certain I read somewhere that Keating left school at the age of 14 and yes PTID is right that Keating never underwent formal education at tertiary level.
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| Tannin wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | Sadly, PK's biggest blind spot was projecting his own peculiar family-and-near-network-based education on the rest of the country. He was never educated formally at tertiary level |
I didn't know that, PTID. However, as a minor point, I do know that Keating went to a very, very good school. Given the outstanding quality of his secondary education, lack of a tertiary education would not have been as much of a handicap for him as it would have been for someone attending a more typical secondary school. It's not unreasonable to view his formal education as being midway between a typical secondary and a typical tertiary one - those old-style selective high schools for bright and gifted children were superior not just to normal high schools but to even the most expensive private schools (which could afford the very best teachers and equipment and certainly had a lot of gifted students but ultimately selected their intake according to daddy's money rather than the student's ability and application). |
Keating was an exceptional individual, and there's probably no basis for buiding policy upon his experience and abilitities.
I see no problem with a modest - the word is imprortant - HECS charge. I don't really buy the argument that graduates pay more tax and thus pay back their education. The point of higher taxation is equalisation, not some nominal remittance for specific services.
The value in a modest HECS contribution is that it puts consumer pressure upon the providers, charges time-wasters, and it has helped fund the dramatic expansion of higher education over the past 25 years. It should also be used as a market signal to preference those subjects where the non-university-going taxpayer is likely to derive the greatest benefit - science and technology, vocational studies, and a smallish number of high-achieving students of the humanities. Set at a modest level, with pay back above average incomes, it's unlikely to discourage anyone and likely to do more good than harm.
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think positive 
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Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Mugwump wrote: | | Tannin wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | Sadly, PK's biggest blind spot was projecting his own peculiar family-and-near-network-based education on the rest of the country. He was never educated formally at tertiary level |
I didn't know that, PTID. However, as a minor point, I do know that Keating went to a very, very good school. Given the outstanding quality of his secondary education, lack of a tertiary education would not have been as much of a handicap for him as it would have been for someone attending a more typical secondary school. It's not unreasonable to view his formal education as being midway between a typical secondary and a typical tertiary one - those old-style selective high schools for bright and gifted children were superior not just to normal high schools but to even the most expensive private schools (which could afford the very best teachers and equipment and certainly had a lot of gifted students but ultimately selected their intake according to daddy's money rather than the student's ability and application). |
Keating was an exceptional individual, and there's probably no basis for buiding policy upon his experience and abilitities.
I see no problem with a modest - the word is imprortant - HECS charge. I don't really buy the argument that graduates pay more tax and thus pay back their education. The point of higher taxation is equalisation, not some nominal remittance for specific services.
The value in a modest HECS contribution is that it puts consumer pressure upon the providers, charges time-wasters, and it has helped fund the dramatic expansion of higher education over the past 25 years. It should also be used as a market signal to preference those subjects where the non-university-going taxpayer is likely to derive the greatest benefit - science and technology, vocational studies, and a smallish number of high-achieving students of the humanities. Set at a modest level, with pay back above average incomes, it's unlikely to discourage anyone and likely to do more good than harm. |
Excellent post
Having to pay some back means less bludgers too, rotting the system
Oh, and mummy's make money too, guys!
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Mugwump wrote: |
I see no problem with a modest - the word is imprortant - HECS charge. I don't really buy the argument that graduates pay more tax and thus pay back their education. The point of higher taxation is equalisation, not some nominal remittance for specific services.
The value in a modest HECS contribution is that it puts consumer pressure upon the providers, charges time-wasters, and it has helped fund the dramatic expansion of higher education over the past 25 years. It should also be used as a market signal to preference those subjects where the non-university-going taxpayer is likely to derive the greatest benefit - science and technology, vocational studies, and a smallish number of high-achieving students of the humanities. Set at a modest level, with pay back above average incomes, it's unlikely to discourage anyone and likely to do more good than harm. |
Agreed.
I'll buy the issues caused by limiting tertiary education to the privileged few but I won't buy the argument that the graduates pay it back because the earn more. That's a rubbish argument trying to defend a philosophical position.
Everyone should have the opportunity to get a tertiary education and if they have an issue with paying back the cost of that via a temporary levy on their future earnings then they're unlikely to ever earn enough to pay it back anyway.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| stui magpie wrote: | | Mugwump wrote: |
I see no problem with a modest - the word is imprortant - HECS charge. I don't really buy the argument that graduates pay more tax and thus pay back their education. The point of higher taxation is equalisation, not some nominal remittance for specific services.
The value in a modest HECS contribution is that it puts consumer pressure upon the providers, charges time-wasters, and it has helped fund the dramatic expansion of higher education over the past 25 years. It should also be used as a market signal to preference those subjects where the non-university-going taxpayer is likely to derive the greatest benefit - science and technology, vocational studies, and a smallish number of high-achieving students of the humanities. Set at a modest level, with pay back above average incomes, it's unlikely to discourage anyone and likely to do more good than harm. |
Agreed.
I'll buy the issues caused by limiting tertiary education to the privileged few but I won't buy the argument that the graduates pay it back because the earn more. That's a rubbish argument trying to defend a philosophical position.
Everyone should have the opportunity to get a tertiary education and if they have an issue with paying back the cost of that via a temporary levy on their future earnings then they're unlikely to ever earn enough to pay it back anyway. |
And with a degree in economics you too would have the tools to research the problem properly, rather than simply "buying" the nearest pub claim which supports your immediate interests.
My view is quite different from that discussion, as was the rest of Tannin's original point. (Bookmark your disagreement with Tannin on that point, though, because it is the right which uses Tannin's argument on tax all the time, though of course we know their purpose is not what Tannin had in mind).
The problem is you and Mugwump can't have it both ways; you can't call education "a specific service", as Mugwump has and which is an appalling concept, and keep all of its non-specific national benefits and claim, contra Tannin, the progressive tax system is not the end of the story.** That's a total hash of an argument, and certainly nothing to do with rational economics.
And as for undecided young people dabbling in education without really making good of it, i.e., Mugwump's "time wasters" (Joe Hockey's young "leaners", anyone?), we already know absolutely full well we're better off keeping them around universities than dole queues. Why you would want to push such young people into dole queues in a cohort of extremely high (and grossly understated) unemployment, is beyond imagination. That's not only irrational, it's also outright malevolent if you bother following the argument through with any sense of care for the people whose lives you're discussing.
Even ignoring all of the obvious very targeted professional courses such as medicine, university is still the best general education track society has outside of Paul Keating's charmed upbringing, with some huge percentage of attendees using their improved skills and knowledge in all manner of unexpected and even yet-to-be-invented jobs at a later date.
You can't arbitrarily draw a line at year 10, or high school, or a two-year apprenticeship, or a two-year diploma, or an honour's year, or 6 months of trades upgrade courses, or wherever, and say, "that's enough of this education business for the country; the number of years of education recommended in 1960 are good enough for us, and what's more, we've got high enough productivity already, thanks!"
And you can't pick and choose courses over-rigorously because you're not communists who think you can centrally plan future economic need, especially when every economic development expert on the planet is telling you that, in absolute contrast to Mugwump's communist curriculum, agility is the greatest commodity in the information economy. (Which anyone who has done the research knows counts arts courses in due to their development of critical new economy abilities based on multidisciplinary connectionism).
If you want to be economically rational, you could find evidence for declining productivity returns to education or subsets of education spending (adjusting for economic needs in 2020 rather than 1980), and then draw a line or modify the education type itself. That would be rational and I would fully support making adjustments in line with your findings, assuming your accounting of externalities is also rational.
But to my knowledge you won't find any such declining curve which crosses an accompanying cost line because despite a percentage of what seem, at least superficially and without empirical evidence, ridiculous subjects and topics and silly courses and abusive, exploitative apprenticeships, and no doubt the usual waste of all sorts which goes hand-in-hand with institutions public and private alike, no society in the known universe has ever reached a knowledge and intellectual capacity so great as to produce a downward-sloping return to education. The very notion is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds.
And then, as Tannin rightly points out, being economically rational you have to compare what you're doing to what competitors in the global economy are doing, such as Germany, and account for the competitive downgrading of returns against that. (No doubt the Germans would be laughing all the way to the competitive bank while we talk education down, refuse to push for curriculum and structural modification, and signal the optional, "specific-service-like" discretionary nature of education through HECS).
And then, you have to tell us how on god's earth you know, you just know (a) HECS doesn't deter an economic percentage of young Australians in 2014 and it doesn't send a signal which says education is optional and discretionary, so take it or leave it, and (b) you're not extorting and abusing a relatively powerless minority of the population which knows it will statistically damage its future without getting further education, but has no electoral clout to stop more powerful people from bludgeoning it into also paying the bill for the additional productivity it generates. To claim economic rationality and then pretend future taxation is not a disincentive is surely yet more laughs for the gallery.
At the level of national policy, education is a critical macro percentage economic play, not some trivial personal weight loss program. A five percent improvement in either enrollment or delivery quality represents an enormous boon for the country beyond some trite mischaracterisation as "specific services rendered".
The social pyschology tells us young people face increasing cultural pressure to be independent; yet, they also know they won't be able to afford a house for years, let alone bear another tax on an education many were already not keen on pursuing; they struggle to make ends meet and participate in a competitive fashion with wealthier peers in society as it is today (not some imaginary 1960s version of it). For god's sake, they're going through young adulthood and focusing on building their futures at the very same time in what is often a make-or-break moment for their futures, meanwhile living in a country which forever disingenuously and ignorantly talks education down. And you somehow think HECS is not a negative signal to them? That's just laughable.
This is a case of serious national socio-economic policy, not reactionary personal "opinion" without a jot of serious statistical consideration or careful argumentation behind it.
In fact, knowing the monstrous national benefits of education (hell, we haven't even started to deduct the enormous national savings from things Tannin mentioned like reductions in crime rates and increases in health), and the lack of economically rational suggestions put forward to get more people even better educated, which is what anyone sincerely economically rational would be trying to do, this looks suspiciously like more of the usual personal bitterness and existential immaturity looking for a scapegoat.
I mean, if people were pushing for something like a German-style industry training system on top of broadening the education base, we'd know they were being economically serious.
But no, it's a heck of a lot about sour grapes and the abuse of a powerless young minority by older capital holders trying to reduce competition with themselves. But we ought to be getting used to that by now, I guess.
Edits
**Sentence modified for clarification.
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Tannin
Can't remember
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Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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That is quality posting, PTID, (and not just because I agree with you). To those who glanced at it and thought "TLDR", take five to scroll up and follow it through. It's well worth it.
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
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Well I don't have time to read it all want to hit the gym b4 work! But as for pushing "those" kids into a dole queue, no I don't want them hanging around a university! I want them doing a job they are qualified for, earning a living, maybe changing their mind about higher education, and then going out and getting it for themselves. Ie work for their future, and yes, their dinner!
Plenty of good upstanding smart folks go out there and do good in the world without a university degree! It's not a life's necessity!
And quite frankly the way kids are now, with the gimme more and gimme it now attitude, a free ride just won't work.
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| think positive wrote: | Well I don't have time to read it all want to hit the gym b4 work! But as for pushing "those" kids into a dole queue, no I don't want them hanging around a university! I want them doing a job they are qualified for, earning a living, maybe changing their mind about higher education, and then going out and getting it for themselves. Ie work for their future, and yes, their dinner!
Plenty of good upstanding smart folks go out there and do good in the world without a university degree! It's not a life's necessity!
And quite frankly the way kids are now, with the gimme more and gimme it now attitude, a free ride just won't work. |
It's worth persevering through PTID's contribution. It's a quality post & rational. (whoops, I'm not saying PTID hasn't been rational before)  but it is worth reading as it moves way beyond what pisses "us" off.
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Last edited by watt price tully on Mon Oct 27, 2014 10:03 am; edited 1 time in total |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Tannin wrote: | | That is quality posting, PTID, (and not just because I agree with you). To those who glanced at it and thought "TLDR", take five to scroll up and follow it through. It's well worth it. |
I concur. Not only that, I also agree.
In the words of Richie Benaud:
(PTID): Quality post that.
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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No time wasters. Should hae sent 'em down the pit.
No need for musicians, artists, non-"productive" thinkers/researchers/analysts etc. Just make them all dig for coal. That will increase the sum of human happiness. |
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