A Quiet Voice of Reason is Added to the Debate About "Voluntary Student Unionism". (August 4, 2005)

Catherine Lumby

    Catharine Lumby as well as being a card carrying print journalist and TV reporter is associate professor in Sydney University's Department of Media and Communications.

Her opinion piece in today's Sydney Morning Herald says simply that the forcing of voluntary student unionism, as it is currently proposed by the Australian Federal Government on the nation's public universities, is bad policy and she proceeds to give some of the reasons why as seen from her perspective.

Dr Lumby opens with:

A STUDENT recently ended a discussion with me by reminding me that the University of Sydney was a business and she was its client. Sadly, it's a view a growing number of students seem to share.
    Over the past few years, I've had students tell me they can't possibly fail a subject because they've "paid" for their degree. Others seem to think that attending lectures is optional - that the only thing that matters is scraping through the degree and getting a piece of paper.

She goes on to decry the increasing tendency of students as seeing the education process as totally utilitarian, but finds it unsurprising in the light of the current attitude as exemplified by the Federal Government's treatment of the public universities.

"And now," she writes, "The Federal Government is getting ready to push through a bill which will strip universities of the last vestiges of campus life." In Dr Lumby's view the legislation to "abolish compulsory student unionism... will do far more than restrain progressive political activism on campus. It will kill off much of campus life. And it will rend the fabric of our university communities."

The nub of the matter for her is that "[Universities are] places where future opinion leaders and passionate citizens are formed. At its best, tertiary education is about producing well-rounded people. It's about giving people an interdisciplinary education, an understanding of the history of ideas and cultures, and an ability to see the world through something more than a specialist or materialist lens."

And Dr Lumby argues to destroy compulsory student union fees "will [in essence] remove the ability of universities to fund the infrastructure which supports everything outside basic lectures and library facilities... there will be no drama theatres for dramatic societies to stage productions, no facilities to produce student newspapers, no money to maintain sporting ovals or fund sports scholarships, no welfare services and no affordable child care... Every decent university around the world charges annual student service fees, and the best charge four or five times what Australian institutions do."

In fact it is becoming increasingly likely that while the government may adhere to the insistence of the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, that the legislation as it stands with regard to voluntary student unionism is non-negotiable, flexibility will most likely come in the way of compensatory funds for the non-political services student union fees provide.

That should allow Dr Nelson to continue to brandish his hobnailed boots when dealing with the accursed academics.