the revolution is beginning...

(SBS.com)

Gillard's to abolish full fee paying courses
Tuesday, 11 December, 2007


Federal Education Minister and acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she vows to push ahead with plans to abolish full fee-paying university degrees.

Prior to the election, Labor promised to scrap full-fee degrees by 2009 and compensate universities with 11,000 HECS places.

When asked if Ms Gillard could guarantee no places would be lost, she said: "University places are constantly changing, there's not a fixed quantum here.

"We would sit down university-by-university and talk to them about a compact for them which would be about funding matters and particularly about compensation," she told ABC Radio today.

Ms Gillard said the federal government's clear principle was that Australian students should get into university on the basis of merit, not their capacity to pay.

Universities have warned they would have to take on more fee-paying international students to make up for lost revenue.

"I'd want to make sure Australian students had good opportunities, we're not looking to increase places for overseas students at the expense of Australian students," she said.

The Education Minister then went onto hit out at the outgoing Liberal Party, saying Labor's plans for education were vastly different.

"What obviously we want to do is move away from Liberal Party policy where you could pay to get in and people of merit were sort of pushed to the wayside because they couldn't make the fees."