The National Union of Students had a flop last week with a very poorly attended ‘national day of action’. But they showed smarter tactics in peddling this story to The Age for a slow news Easter Monday.
The story opened this way:
THE Federal Government is under growing pressure to revamp the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, as students seize on research suggesting it could contribute to reduced home ownership, low fertility rates and tax evasion.
None of this ‘research’ should trouble the federal government, or anyone else, at all.
I’ve not seen any statistical evidence showing that graduates are suffering particularly in the housing market. Less than two weeks ago the papers were reporting research that despite high housing prices more young Australians were embarking on home ownership than in the past. I can’t find the paper on which that claim was based, and I am sceptical about whether it is true in absolute terms. But certainly earlier research found (pdf) that once you control for other factors affecting the time of house purchases, such as marriage and children, there hasn’t been a reduction in home ownership among the young (though the increases in house prices in the last few years should put a question mark over whether that would continue to be true in the future).
Regardless of the precise trends, though, as I argued last year there is no case for graduates getting a special first home owners grant. Effectively what NUS is saying is that even though graduates earn more on average than non-graduates, they should get an additional goverment subsidy so that they can further bid out of the market other Australians who did not go to university. Though Kevin Rudd has made the home ownership point himself, I would hope that on thinking more carefully a social democratic government would reject such a regressive policy.
On fertility, The Age says:
Andrew Norton 