Dr Nelson’s push for Voluntary Student Unionism has taken another dramatic and unbelievable turn with the recent introduction of ESOS Act amendment bill 2005. What strikes me the most about the amendment is this clause:
(2) A registered provider does not breach its obligations under this Act or any other Act relating to education by charging overseas students, or intending overseas students, an amount as part of the student’s tuition fee, if the amount is for any action the provider is required to undertake because of this Act or the national code.
Note: The heading to section 18 is replaced by the heading “Payments to registered providers”.
What it’s saying is basically the Government intends to allow the university to charge international students for services required by the Act to be provided to the international students.
The debate around the media has been tied to the local students’ plight to have compulsory union fees which international students pay as well. This debate centers on the idea why international students can pay for those services but local students dont. Obviously while this is discriminatory, the debate misses one crucial fact: International Students have been paying extra for those services!!
The naivety and stupidity of the Government is highlighted by this comment in The Australian:
A spokesman for Dr Nelson said the existing Education Services for Overseas Students Act had always obligated universities to offer these services to full-fee-paying international students.
“These technical changes continue that requirement,” he said.
“Is the Labor Party now seriously suggesting that Australian students and taxpayers should subsidise the services that universities are required to provide to international full-fee paying students?”
Whoever this spokesman is obviously does not understand his own argument. Obviously the most straightforward comparison that any Tom, Dick and Harry can easily do is by looking at the tuition fees charged by universities to international students and their full fee paying local counterparts (these full fee paying students are NOT subsidised by Australian taxpayers, thats why its called FULL FEE). I did a small comparison table on this:
As you can see, there already exists fee differential between the two categories of students. One can only assume that the difference between the two is because of the extra requirements and services that the Universities should/must provide to the overseas students because of the extra duty of care that the universities undertake in recruting overseas student instead of local student.
For this very reason, the legislation that allows universities to charge a SEPARATE fee for those services is naive, stupid and unnecessary because the market place has already sorted that out in the first place – the universities have already built-in those costs into their fee schedules. To legislate for another charge means that it is essentially double charging!!!