Will, Emma (SEN)
From:	Harriet Baillie [h.baillie@unsw.edu.au]
Sent:	Saturday, 31 March 2001 4:31 PM
To:	eet.sen@aph.gov.au
Subject:	Submission
Dear Secretary,

I would like to submit my personal concerns to the Senate Employment,
Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education References Committee's
inquiry entitled "The capacity of public universities to meet
Australia’s higher education needs".

I am a research postgraduate student at UNSW and am in my fourth year of
study for a Ph.D. I believe that both types of postgraduate education,
research and coursework, are fundamental to the need of our society for
appropriately educated people to lead and participate in all levels of
the community. The trend over the last 15 years for more students to pay
for their postgraduate education does not take into the enormous gains
and benefits to the broader community of having a well educated
population. Instead postgraduate education appears to be seen as only of
direct benefit to the student and therefore a luxury that individuals
must pay for.

I would specifically like to focus on two areas defined in the broad
inquiry:
    1. the support for research students under the current Australian
Postgraduate Award (APA) scheme (sections (a) iii., (b) i. and (b) ii.
of the terms of reference).
    2. the accessibility of postgraduate education (section (d) i.)
I have a number of smaller points within these sections which I expand
on below.

1. Support for research students
    a. Length of APA awards
    The current maximum length of a full time APA award is 3.5 years
while the current average completion time is approximately 4.7 years.
This in effect leaves the majority of students without financial support
for 1.2 years. Cutting off the APA when research is still progressing
often greatly hinders the completion of the thesis as students must then
go out and spend more time working to support themselves, taking them
away both in terms of time and focus from their research. This in effect
lengthens both the time of completion for a research degree and the
stress on the student.
    Additionally the proposed decrease to the length of research
education funding given to universities under the RTS scheme (from 5
years to 4 years for a full time Ph.D.) is exceedingly short sighted and
misinformed. This is because it does not recognise the inevitably risky
and unpredictable nature of much research nor the needs of different
disciplines. Projects in the discipline that I work in, marine ecology,
may require field sampling periods of up to 3 years in order to produce
a thesis which gives an unique contribution to the field. This
shortening will invariably mean that less risky and innovative research
will be done, the standard of the Australian Ph.D. will drop and equity
groups such as women and indigenous students (who take longer on average
to complete than average) will be further discriminated against (see
below).

b. Amount of APA awards
i. Full time awards  - The amount of the APA stipend is not adequate for
students in areas where the cost of living is high such as in Sydney,
Melbourne and Darwin. As a postgraduate student at a university in
Sydney, I currently spend 55% of my weekly scholarship stipend on rent
(a small one room apartment 15 minutes bike ride from the university
campus), a further 21% on food and 9% on transport, leaving $50 to cover
all other costs. As I am unable to work (due to my position as a member
of UNSW Council) I rely on financial support generous given by my family
to meet the costs of living in Sydney. I find this situation
uncomfortable and unreasonable for a person who has lived independently
for 10 years. I therefore recommend that the cost of living is taken
into account in the calculation of APA scholarships.

ii. Part time awards - Part time APA awards are currently not classified
as non-taxable income,  making them incongruous to the full time
scholarships which are tax free. More importantly however the taxable
nature of part-time scholarships displays blatant discrimination on the
part of the Government against people who have caring responsibilities
or are disabled, as part time scholarships are only available to people
who are "able to demonstrate heavy care commitments or a medical
condition" (see
http://www.detya.gov.au/highered/research/documents/apa2001.htm#7_1). So
these groups receive proportionally less support for their research by
virtue of the fact that they are unable to do their study at full time.
This situation is appalling and I therefore recommend to the Committee
that part-time APA scholarships are reclassified as tax exempt.

 2. the Accessibility of Postgraduate Education
I am exceedingly concerned that the deregulation of fees for
postgraduate coursework has affected the accessibility of postgraduate
education to certain groups in the community, particularly women and
indigenous people. This is well displayed by the situation at UNSW.
While I recognise this is only one tertiary institution it is also one
of the largest and so I believe can be taken as indicative of the sector
as a whole.

a. Women
Amongst the more than 11 000 postgraduate students at UNSW in 2001,
women make up on 41.9% (UNSW Planning Office). This is in contrast to
the percentage of students who are women in undergraduate study (48%) at
the university. This discrepancy points to the fact that women are less
able to access postgraduate education than their male counterparts.

I am additionally concerned that women are no longer viewed as an equity
group by DETYA. This clearly does not take into account the statistics I
have quoted above and fails to recognise that certain parts of our
society still discriminate against women by virtue of their gender. I
therefore recommend that women be recognised again as a valid equity
group by DETYA.

b. Indigenous people
    The statistics for indigenous people enrolled in postgraduate study
at UNSW in 2001 is shocking: of more than 11 000 postgraduate students
only 13 are identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (UNSW
Planning Office). While UNSW appears to have HECS award scholarships
targetted particularly for indigenous students interested in
postgraduate coursework studies, these "scholarships" only cover
coursework fees and not living expenses, which does not recognise the
financial difficulties that indigenous peoples may often have when
moving away from their communities.

    I believe that the Government has a responsibility to take an active
role in recognising the importance of our Indigenous peoples to our
community and therefore I recommend that the Government sets up a
Indigenous Postgraduate Award of an equivalent or greater stipend as the
Australian Postgraduate Awards. I also recommend the Government sets up
an Indigenous Postgraduate Coursework Scholarship Scheme that includes a
HECS award and a stipend for living expenses.

    A further issue that is raised by the question of how fees affect
participation of equity groups at the postgraduate level of education,
is that people who cannot enter postgraduate education (and therefore
are not presently at universities) are a very unknown group. There have
been no research in Australia that I am aware of that has studied people
not engaged in postgraduate education and their reasons for this. I
recommend to the Committee that in order to fully understand the affect
of postgraduate fees (both HECS and course fees) on equity groups that
the Government through DETYA fund research on these groups.

Please contact me at this email address or on my mobile 0412 533 562 if
there you require any other information.

Yours Sincerely

Ms. Harriet Baillie

School of Biological Sciences
UNSW   NSW  2052
mob 0412 533 562