5 July, 2012

"Free" university education for the poor: Was that first brought to to Australia by a Leftist government?

Except for those of us old enough to know better, "Yes" seems to be the answer usually given to the above question in Australia today -- mainly due to media distortion. A scheme introduced by a short-lived (1972 to 1975) very radical Leftist government headed by Gough Whitlam is usually said to be responsible.


The supercilious Saint Gough

This is utter rubbish: It was Whitlam's conservative predecessor, Robert Menzies, who in fact made university open to all -- if you had the ability. And it was a Leftist (Labor) government that ditched Gough's scheme

The Commonwealth scholarship scheme set up by Menzies made the reasonable assumption that only the top third of high school graduates would do well at university and gave that subset both a living allowance and free tuition at university. I myself got a Commonwealth scholarship -- and I do come from a poor working class background. And I ended up with a Ph.D.

Whitlam on the other hand made university "free" to ALL -- a policy so expensive and wasteful that it was eventually abandoned by the next Labor government -- under Bob Hawke. Hawke reintroduced fees and gave means-tested sustenance grants.

I think the Menzies scheme was by far the most fair, generous and effective of the three systems. The expansion of university education beyond the top third has simply led to lower standards and a mass of graduates who are no more employable than they would be without a degree. The unemployed graduate was virtually unknown in my day. These days it is common. And a lot of the employed ones are working at McDonald's

So I was able to cruise through university despite having no rich father (and no support of any kind from him at all). My son, by contrast, also cruised -- but only because I was readily able to pay for his upkeep and his fees -- which I did. So which system was fairer to the poor?

Just for fun, a bit of the usual hagiography from the media below. Note that I appear to be the same age and social background as the writer below, Geoff Cooper, so he had the same opportunities that I did

Gough Whitlam's visionary tertiary education scheme opened up doors for many.

Officially I am two years too old to be classed as a member of the baby boomer generation but I was one of the many fortunate people whose life was absolutely changed through the policies of former prime minister Gough Whitlam, Australia's greatest ever visionary.

As a working-class kid from the then very poor working-class suburb of Yarraville, it was beyond my wildest dreams to even consider having a tertiary education.

Even completing secondary education to sixth form (year 12) was not on my radar.

My old alma mater, Footscray Tech, only went to year 10 and if you lived anywhere west of the Yarra, your biggest decision after completing secondary school was to join the laudable but limited careers of carpentry, plumbing or other of the building trades. Whitlam changed all that.

Never has one man had such an impact on our nation in such a short time. No-fault divorce, universal health insurance, the first real recognition of indigenous people, a major step towards equal rights for women and access to justice for all, to list just a few of his major achievements.

But for me and many thousands like me, it was his creation of TEAS, the Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme, that changed my life and I believe allowed many of us to add so much more to our communities because of it.

At the ripe old age of 31 I was able to undertake what previously had been denied me; I gained entrance to Monash University. The rush of mature-age students into tertiary education in the late '70s indicated just how many of us had missed out on an education during the previous 23 years of conservative rule.

Forget the Khemlani affair and Rex Connor's delusional plans to run a gas pipeline across Australia, the fact that our country was dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century is something that all Australians should be grateful for.

Thirty-seven years on, today's modern Australia is a direct result of the Whitlam years.

SOURCE

Anthough not directly relevant to the present topic, it should be noted that some of the other claims for Whitlam above are also pretty wild. "The first real recognition of indigenous people", for instance, came with the 1967 constitutional referendum, conducted by a conservative government.

And the universal free health insurance scheme did not last long either. It was replaced by a bipartisan extension of the old "free" State-government-run hospital system. The quality of the government-run hospitals is so poor that over 40% of Australians have taken out private health insurance to avoid them. They pay extra rather than avail themselves of the "free" service.



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