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Armchair_Politician
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sir prince duke alevine wrote on Apr 17 th, 2013 at 9:24pm: Armchair_Politician wrote on Apr 17 th, 2013 at 9:20pm: sir prince duke alevine wrote on Apr 17 th, 2013 at 9:12pm: Armchair_Politician wrote on Apr 17 th, 2013 at 9:08pm: sir prince duke alevine wrote on Apr 17 th, 2013 at 9:05pm: Armchair_Politician wrote on Apr 17 th, 2013 at 8:58pm: sir prince duke alevine wrote on Apr 17 th, 2013 at 8:42pm: Armchair_Politician wrote on Apr 17 th, 2013 at 8:34pm: One of the big problems with Gillard's insane gouging of university funding is the changes to how students pay for their degrees. A large part of the funding for the Gonski farce is supposed to come from HECS debt repayments. However, that's money that they can only predict will be taken in as revenue. It's not a guaranteed and stable source of revenue because students don't need to repay their HECS debt until they reach a certain level of pay. At present the nation-wide HECS debt stands at about $22bn. This is going to create a massive black hole in Gillard's Gonski (or should it be Con-ski???) plans... How much is meant to come from hecs repayments? I can't remember. I was talking to a friend of my wife's today. My wife is a high school head teacher of english and history and her friend is an executive-level manager in the NSW Dept of Education who's worked in the system more than 30 years. He's the one who told me about this. In a nutshell, he said it's more or less the same as the mining tax. The government has gone and planned how to spend what they expect to get from it, but in the end they got nothing at all from the mining tax. Could be the same with the HECS thing too. right, but HECS is fully funded under the budget, right? So then the $22B hecs debt is actually the debt owed to the government by the students. Surely you're not suggesting every student will become unemployable under a Tony government? or that their incomes are going to be below $49,000? And if that's the case, surely repayments will be made to the government as part of tax collection, and this money can be re-invested into school funding? No, what I'm saying is that not every student will begin repaying their debt as soon as they finish their degree because not all will come out with a job earning the required amount for repayments to be made. That will make it nigh on impossible to budget this element of Gillard's plan. It's rorbbing Peter to pay Paul and crossing your fingers and hoping you find enough money at Peter's place. Oh you missed this part I added in just after you quoted: Oh, and the difference between the mining tax and HECS is that the mining tax is a crap design by Swan, trying to save the remnants of a once good policy, simply because he has no idea how to sell. HECs on the other hand has been part of the system for decades and yearly brings in revenue for the government. They have data to allow them to measure expectations,even in the event of Tony stuffing things up so badly that every student is either earning $12 an hour in a professional position, or is simply unemployable because no more jobs exist. It's not the same as robbing Peter to pay Paul. Peter's borrowed that money so Peter isn't being robbed from, but rather he is paying it back. So the government has decided to re-invest Peter's repayment to help Paul. And they know they can pay Paul because there are many Peters ,from decades of this program running, who are returning their borrowings to the Government. The only reason HECs repayments may dramatically fall is if Tony stuffs things up to such a degree that our unemployment sky rockets. Are you suggesting this? No. Again, I'm saying that it's akin to the problems with the mining tax. Swan has budgeted for such-and-such in revenue from that tax and has gone and spent the money he budgeted for despite it not being there yet. Since then, there has been zero revenue, as we all know. A similar situation is possible with HECS, as it is impossible to know how many students will repay their HECS debt at any time and by how much. See above. The modelling on HECs is a lot more sophisticated than the modelling on the mining tax in its first year and during a time of dropping resource prices. So, what you're suggesting is that under Tony things will become so dire that HECs models become redundant. Again, no! I'm simply saying it is impossible for anyone to forecast what the government will receive in terms of HECS repayments in any given year and to rely on it so heavily in this Gonski plan is a recipie for disaster. You simply cannot predict how many ex-students will get jobs, when they will get them or how much they will be able to repay.
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