University of Wollongong students will step up their campaign to stop proposed education changes they say will leave them ‘’with a lifetime of debt’’.
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UOW student Chloe Rafferty said the package announced by federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham on Monday ‘’was an assault on our right to an education’’.
The proposed changes will force university graduates to pay back their HECS debts when they start earning just $42,000 a year and student fees will rise by 8 per cent.
The lowering of the HECS repayment threshold - down from the current $55,874 - is more dramatic than expected and will see almost 200,000 extra graduates dragged into the repayment system. The threshold was previously legislated to fall to $52,000 in coming years.
The changes will also hit universities with funding cuts through a 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend in the package, designed to save the budget $2.8 billion in total over the next four years.
But Senator Birmingham said the proposal, which still has to get through the Senate, was ‘’fair, measured and modest’’.
Miss Rafferty, the NSW education vice-president for National Union of Students (NUS), ‘’strongly disagreed’’.
"The Liberals are once again attacking students, trying to burden us with a lifetime of debt to pay for tax cuts for their rich mates,’’ she said.
‘’The massive 7.5 per cent fee increase on top of $2.8 billion in funding cuts is the Liberals trying to turn education into a luxury commodity not a human right.
‘’Students aren't going to take this lying down. We defeated fee deregulation a few years ago by protesting, we're going to hit the streets to stop Turnbull's fee hikes.’’
UOW students will hold a Speak-Out event on campus on Tuesday, May 16 from 1.30pm to protest ‘’this assault on our right to an education’’.
This event follows on from a coordinated action by students on Thursday targeting the offices of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Senator Birmingham as part of a national campaign against fee increases and funding cuts.
‘’The Prime Minister and the Minister for education will not get away with their savage attack on students. In Sydney and Adelaide students will seek to occupy the offices…..to show that student anger is not going away,’’ NUS education officer Anneke Demanuele said. National protests will be held on May 17.
