Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to get a question from the member for Petrie about the budget and about higher education in particular, because this government's reforms to higher education are designed to do two things: they are designed to spread the opportunity to more Australians to get a higher education qualification and they are designed to equip our universities with the freedom that they need to be able to thrive and be the best they possibly can be in order to compete with the Asian competitor universities in our region. We are doing that through the largest Commonwealth scholarships fund in Australia's history and by removing the cap on diplomas and associate degrees so that up to 80,000 more young people will get the opportunity, over time, to get a diploma, associate degree or undergraduate degree. We are extending the Commonwealth Grants Scheme to non-university higher education providers to give a shot of competition to the market and also expand opportunities for more students. We are abolishing the loan fees for VET, vocational education and training, and non-university higher education courses which have been a disincentive to students to go to those kinds of institutions. And we are deregulating universities.

Some of the myths that have been put about about deregulating universities are that deregulation will lead to fewer young people of low socioeconomic status going to university and that it will lead to a reduction in enrolments. I think it is instructive to look at the experience of England and Scotland after the deregulation of fees in England and the abolition of fees in Scotland, because they both occurred at about the same time and the results are starting to come in. I must admit I have been helped by the Guardian website—unusually so. Daniel Carr from theguardian.com wrote a very good piece yesterday, exposing the fact that the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service in the UK found:

Compared with entry rates in 2011, the year before the introduction of higher tuition fees in England, 18 year olds in disadvantaged areas in England are 12 per cent more likely to enter in 2013.

It also found:

… the share of disadvantaged background students entering university is now at its highest in a decade.

That is what has been found in Great Britain after the deregulation of fees: more students from poorer backgrounds are at university today than before deregulation. In Scotland, fees were abolished. In an article in TheTelegraph, Professor Riddell from Edinburgh university's school of education found:

… the proportion of students from low income backgrounds has not changed since fees were abolished …

So the abolition of fees in Scotland led to no change at all in the number of poorer students going to university, but the change in England meant that more students got to go to university than before deregulation— (Time expired)

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