First off the blocks: UWA put its hand up to be the first university to set out what its fees would be under deregulation. Just why they would do that beggars belief, especially since the news is not so great for students. Sure a flat $16,000 charge across all of its five broad undergraduate areas sounds politically palatable, but as with everything, the devil is in the detail.
Because protestations by Christopher Pyne that speculation of $100,000 degrees is merely scaremongering, guess what, UWA will be charging $100,000 for a law degree — and a lot more for medicine, dentistry and the like. It works like this: UWA’s curriculum model means that students must complete a broad undergraduate degree, and then a two-year masters program if they want professional accreditation as a lawyer, or architect or teacher — just like the Melbourne model. So student who hopes to become a lawyer, for example, would pay $48,000 for their three year undergraduate program plus two years in a masters of law program. UWA’s current fees for that program are $23,610 a year — or $47,200. In other words, $95,220 to become a lawyer at UWA. Under the current fee regime the cost is a mere $82,198. $100,000 degrees? Sure thing!
But there’s more: A student who aspires to be a schoolteacher at UWA in 2014 pays $18,456 for their bachelors degree, then $12,088 ($6,044 for two years) to complete their masters of teaching. That’s a grand total of $30,544. However, that would increase to $60,000 under the new fee structure. Somehow, that is not going to be an easy sell.
Cocksure: UWA is brazenly leveraging its status and fortuitous position as WA’s only sandstone. Compared with what students are paying now it looks like price gouging from the get go. What would a pricing regulator say? Who cares, there isn’t one. More pertinently, what crossbench Senator is going to support this?
Location, location, location: The steep prices being charged by UWA are especially egregious when you consider that UWA is set to benefit handsomely from billionaire iron ore tycoon Andrew Forrest’s philanthropy. Sure, the high prices mean UWA will have to put a fair bit of its cream into equity programs, but HW isn’t sure students will like the idea of having to pay to support other students.
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