Page 2811 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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It is interesting to dwell upon the problems that may arise in the CIT at a time when, wherever you go in this territory, employers are saying that they cannot find people with sufficient skills to fill their jobs. I am concerned that my own currently limited experience with the CIT is that students of my acquaintance, including my own daughter, have been confronted by teachers who have said that they have to restructure significantly. For instance, in one area, although they have not worked out exactly how they are going to restructure, it may be that the contact hours will be cut by 50 per cent. The other alternative is to combine two classes into one and have a very large number of students in that one class.
These are areas where we should be very concerned. There is something wrong if teachers think that the most appropriate thing to do is to cut the number of contact hours by 50 per cent and feel that they are being driven to do so because they have to save such significant sums of money. We are looking at $1.7 million in savings this year and, over the life of the budget, in excess of $3 million being taken out of the CIT budget. That seems to be the highlight of the budget when it comes to training. As with all other aspects of training, there are cuts, cuts and more cuts.
The other area of considerable concern is the 30 per cent increase over the life of the budget in fees for students. Again, it seems to me that we are making people pay in areas where often they have the least capacity to do so. My daughter’s cohort who chose to go to university at least have the capacity to defer the up-front costs of their education, but students at the CIT do not. At a time when we are talking about skill shortages in critical trades and IT, areas in which considerable training is done at the CIT, we have a situation whereby, beginning next year and taking place over the next three years, there will be an increase of 10 per cent a year, an increase of slightly in excess of 30 per cent, in fees. There is no capacity for students in those areas to defer their payments. These are not HECS-eligible courses. Students have to pay up front at the beginning of each semester or at the beginning of each term. For each period of study you have to pay your money before you can start your courses.
I am particularly concerned for people on low incomes who want to see their children get on in technical areas, because those are the people who are going to be least able to bear these costs. Middle class people will be able to tighten their belt and not go out to dinner two or three times to make up for the changes, but people who are really on the margins may be in a situation where they have to say to their children, “I am sorry, I know that this trade skill would be good for you in the long run but I honestly cannot afford to pay the fees.” In a town which is crying out for skilled workers, in a town which says that it values education, we will be making it harder for the poorest to participate in that regard.
The well off and the middle class will find a way, but the people on benefits, the people who are retired or on pensions in some way and the people who are low income earners, perhaps with large families, will not necessarily have the means to see their way clear to put their children into the Canberra Institute of Technology. It is one of the foremost technical institutions in this country, having built up over the years since self-government to become a great institution, and we have here in this budget more thoughtless cuts.
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