The Mercedes-Benz CLK 63 AMG is an impressive car, but at $200,000 it is rather out of my price range. But am I excluded from car ownership as a result? If you apply the logic of the National Union of Students, the answer to that question is yes. In response to the annual media kerfuffle over $100,000 and $200,000 university courses reported in each year’s Good Universities Guide, NUS issued a media release:

The National Union of Students called on the government to review its position on full fee paying places in order to provide opportunities to all students, regardless of whether they have wealthy families or are prepared to take up a $200,000 loan. National President, Mr Michael Nguyen said, “The prospect of going to university and graduating with a huge debt really makes it difficult for young people to be able to go to university unless they come from wealthy families.”

Of course, very few of the 663,000 Australians enrolled in Commonwealth-connnected higher education institutions last year were paying $200,000 or anything like it. Many of the most expensive courses are in fact double degrees which in practice cost less than the figure reported in the Good Universities Guide. When I have looked into this in the past the GUG assumes that people pay full-fees for both courses. However, as the full-fee ENTER for the more prestigious course is usually above the HECS ENTER for the less prestigious course, any students would pay full fees for one and HECS for the other. I haven’t had time to do more than quick check of this year’s GUG, but for Monash at least the same problem is there. Monash’s website states for Arts/Law:
Continue reading “Strained logic on full-fee university places” →