VCA and HECS

I understand that the Nelson higher education reforms have left many at the Victorian College of the Arts worried about whether the institution has a future at all. It seems as if the worst of the doomsday scenarios has been averted (I was always inclined to think that rumours about the VCA’s demise might have been exaggerated). I thought this was interesting:

The arts college was the last higher education institution in Victoria to consider whether or not to increase HECS fees by up to 25 per cent - the maximum allowed under the Federal Government’s university changes.

But the college council resisted the change, saying graduates could have trouble repaying the debt on an artist’s income.

But the beauty of the HECS system is that the repayments are indexed to your income. If it’s true that artists tend to earn less (which it is), then surely the repayment provisions take care of that? Lots of artists I know (myself included, for the time being) have yet to pay a cent of HECS because their income has yet to reach the threshold. It’s not uncommon for artists to live their whole lives on not much more than $20,000 a year, which leaves them well under the point at which the repayments cut in. And if I’m not wrong, if you die with the debt, then the remaining amount gets waived. So effectively, if you go through your life earning little enough, you never have to worry about HECS unless some future government comes along and changes the repayment conditions.

But …

But the decision to allow domestic undergraduate students to pay full, up-front fees to secure a place proved contentious.

VCA student union president Jacqueline Grenfell said the decision undermined the college’s long-standing merit-based entry system. Present students of the college had to meet a range of talent-based requirements.

The emphasis here is the question as to whether offering full fee-paying places will cut the number of HECS places and deny entry to otherwise worthy candidates. I think that’s an issue, but I also think that there’s a bigger issue. No matter what university course you’re going through, you benefit by being surrounded by really good students. You get more out of a tutorial if the discussion is lively and well-informed, you allow the teaching staff to spend their time exploring interesting issues instead of going over remedial stuff for the less advanced students, etc. But that effect is even more pronounced in an arts institution, where so much of the learning and assessment happens on a group basis. There’s no point in being the only competent player in a string quartet, or the only good actor in a drama production. If you dilute the standard by letting in full fee-paying students who wouldn’t otherwise get a place, then you’re actively selling out the education of those who have gained entry on their merits, not only indirectly (by lowering the standard of graduates and the perceived value of the degree), but also directly (because so much of arts education is peer-dependent).

In summary, I think they’ve got it backwards. They should have jacked up the HECS and canned the idea of full fee paying places.

July 7, 2004. Uncategorized. 4 Comments.

4 Comments

  1. Nick replied:

    As you say, the debt will keep increasing as you keep earning 20k. You might die and wipe the debt off, having earned that amount your whole life (hurray for grinding life-long poverty!). Or you might suddenly become successful at age 42 and face a mountain of debt that you finally pay off when you retire at 65.

    July 7th, 2004 at 9:13 pm. Permalink.

  2. Dan replied:

    Hmm … well, your debt is indexed to inflation, but it doesn’t accumulate interest. So the big debt you’re hit with when you get successful at age 42 will be the same debt (in real terms, theoretically) as you’d be hit with if you got successful at 21. And if you’re an artist who’s used to surviving on 20k, you’ll be swimming in so much cash (even if it only amounts to 50k) that you won’t care about paying off a bit of HECS while you’re at it.

    July 8th, 2004 at 12:55 am. Permalink.

  3. David Tiley replied:

    VCA Film and Television is not a happy place - at least in the documentary area. The postgrad students used to get a 20 mins - half hour film to make, which is a useful length for teev and as a calling card.

    Now its down to 8 mins and there’s a theory component as I understand it.

    Students are not happy Mr Pudovkin, not happy at all.

    July 8th, 2004 at 10:08 pm. Permalink.

  4. Nick replied:

    Oh, I had some idea that the debt was attracting interest…

    My HECS debt was paid off several years ago. But before then, it certainly SEEMED to get larger every year in a sufficiently ugly fashion that I assumeed interest was involved.

    July 11th, 2004 at 12:07 am. Permalink.