Surprise! Next Week’s Budget Will Hit Uni Students Hard

The 2017 Federal Budget looks set to include university funding cuts that will force student fees to increase, Fairfax is reporting. New measures will also lower the HECS repayment threshold below its current level of $54,869.

Education minister Simon Birmingham will meet with university chancellors and students leaders in the coming days to give more details on the cuts. VICE understands the minister will justify the funding cuts using new data from Deloitte Access Economics, which shows a majority of university courses are overfunded or adequately funded.

Deloitte reportedly found that while teaching costs at universities grew from 9.5 percent between 2010 and 2015, revenues grew by 15 percent. The group suggests these findings show universities are funnelling their leftover money away from students to subsidise research projects.

As a result of this finding—that universities apparently receive more money than they need to teach students in most courses—the government will introduce an "efficiency dividend." This will see a $900 million reduction in university funding over the next four years. Veterinary science and dentistry, two courses found by Deloitte to receive inadequate funding, may escape the cuts.

At this stage, it's unknown how much the HECS repayment threshold will fall in the Budget. Last year a Grattan Institute report recommended that it be lowered to incomes of $42,000 and above—although some academics warned this would unfairly affect graduates and low income earners who were struggling to find full-time work.

On that note, it's also been reported that next week's Budget will crack down on job seekers by making it easier for Centrelink to cut payments from those who regularly miss their appointments. Employment minister Michaelia Cash told The Australian on Monday that she no longer wanted Australia's welfare system to be abused by people who "have no desire to work." The system she said was "there to provide a safety net for those in need—not to fund a lifestyle choice."

In Australia, youth unemployment for 15- to 24-year-olds is currently sitting at around 13.3 percent, while underemployment is at is highest level in 40 years. Eighteen percent of Australians between 15 and 24 years old are working less than they want to be. Whether the Budget will seek to address this issue remains to be seen.

Is any of this actually news? It's not as though there's been a Budget in living memory that's done well by students or young people. And there's no guarantee that these new measures will successfully pass through Parliament, either—in 2015, the Senate twice voted down legislation to uncap university fees. Last year's budget quietly scrapped deregulation altogether.

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