by Chris Becker

The cat is out of the bag for all you future students (or parents on average incomes) with the Oz reporting:

THE first university to set fees under the government’s controversial deregulation plan will charge a flat price of $48,000 for a three-year undergraduate ­degree, a steep rise in what students currently pay. The University of Western Australia, the nation’s fourth-highest ranked on some international standings, revealed it would charge an annual fee of $16,000 for the five basic undergraduate courses it offers. That’s a pretty steep starting price (given its around $28K in the US, which is in a bubble) and about double the current HELP rate for most undergrad degrees. Graduates will now have a circa $50K debt – which is soon to be payable at market interest rates, and securitised to be sold off to private debt merchants – to start their job career. Luckily they don’t need to save much money for a house deposit though – oh wait! Ironically, the same paper which has been championing “a free market” in education also published this doozy (cross posted from The Times):

ALL GERMAN universities will be free of charge when term starts next week after fees were abandoned in Lower Saxony, the last of seven states to charge. “Tuition fees are socially unjust,” said Dorothee Stapelfeldt, senator for science in Hamburg, which scrapped charges in 2012. “They particularly discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up studies. It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany.” “We got rid of tuition fees because we do not want higher education which depends on the wealth of the parents,” said Gabriele Heinen-Kljajic of the Green party, the minister for science and culture in Lower Saxony.

Those damn socialist Germans! Don’t they know anything about how to run an economy or investing in your country’s future?

The road to the brilliant US tertiary education model is wide open – full speed ahead!

And the always good John Oliver (h/t Dunno)

