Samantha Maiden, Online Political Editor | December 30, 2008
DEGREES in maths and science will be offered at discounts of more than $10,000 under changes taking effect on January 1.
The changes will slash the cost of HECS charges for students studying these degrees from $7412 to $4162 a year, substantially reducing the cost of a three-year degree.
Graduates who take up primary school teaching positions will be eligible for a refund of about half their HECS-HELP repayments for up to five years. This would amount to an individual benefit of up to $1500 per year for five years.
From January 1, the Rudd government will also move to implement its longstanding election pledge to abolish full fee degrees in Australia, blowing a multi-million dollar hole in the budgets of many cash-strapped universities.
The changes will end the rise of the $100,000 full fee degree under the Howard government but could force universities to ramp up overseas student programs to develop extra revenue streams, just as the global financial crisis hits enrolments.
The HECS policy changes are designed to encourage more students to study maths and science in Australia but it will also test the theory advanced by some academics that such discounts do not shift student choices.
“Any reduction in HECS is to be celebrated. But the experience we have is that the interest in science and maths education really starts at school,” University of Western Sydney vice-chancellor Janice Reid told The Australian Online.
“So I think any efforts to lift enrolments has to be complemented by outreach into schools.
ANU vice-chancellor Ian Chubb said it was a positive move.
“Anything that makes science degrees more popular is a good thing. We need more scientists,” he said today.
“But whether it will work, that's always a question you can only answer when you try it.”
Most students do not pay HECS upfront but delay payments until they graduate and repay their debts through extra tax payments.
The full fee degrees allow students who missed out on marks to gain a place in their preferred course to pay full fees of $200,000 a year for some medicine courses.
These degrees have allowed hundreds of students who failed to secure the marks required for a taxpayer-subsidised HECS place to enter university under the user-pays system.
To compensate universities for the abolition of these places the Rudd government will provide funding for 11,000 new university places in national priority areas.
But because these places will not be automatically provided to universities that offered full fee degrees some universities will be left out of pocket by the changes.
