Group of Eight Forcefully Voices its Opinion on the Payment of Student Services Fees. (December 5, 2005)

    A media release from the Group of Eight has made it abundantly clear that it considers the Government's projected interference with regard to the methodology used to determine the setting or use of student service fees unwelcome, and unwarranted.

Any move by the federal government to dictate the purposes for which universal student service fees may be collected and disbursed will interfere in the autonomy of universities and damage the character of the cultural, social, sporting and learning environment of the university.

 

Student service fees are used to sustain child care, counselling and health services. They support many sporting, music, theatre, debating, international and other societies that constitute the cultural life and identity of the university.

 

The democratic process that produces student representative bodies is an integral tool in the governance of the university – often with a long and valued heritage. Student bodies are an important mechanism in the consultative process between the university administrations and their student communities. Student representatives provide input to the academic bodies and the review panels that determine teaching, scholarship and research directions of our institutions. They provide advocacy for individual students involved in academic review and disciplinary procedures.

 

The payment of fees for student services is not the equivalent of compulsory membership of a student union. Our universities have a variety of mechanisms that provide for optional membership. In the same way that rates and taxes are seen in a fair and modern democratic society as fundamental to the welfare of the local, state and national community, so too student fees can be viewed as the necessary contribution to the sustenance of the university community.