'We won't have classes next Monday because of the public holiday on Tuesday.' My tutor tells us this in a cheery voice, as if he has done us a favour by cancelling one out of the ten classes we'll have in this subject.
The tute feels crowded every week, about 30 of us in an engineering classroom which has chairs for maybe two thirds of our current number. Every week we spend time shuffling around to nearby rooms to gather enough chairs for us all to even sit down.
I'm currently studying a degree that costs $4000 each semester. That translates to about $60 per hour of actual teaching time.
This includes one subject where instead of being able to meet with faculty members, we must skype them once a week. If that's not the most expensive skype call ever made, then perhaps the critics are correct, and young people should stop complaining about the potential increase of tertiary fees.
Under speculation the government plans to cut a significant amount of funding to tertiary institutions, it is predicted each student's fees could go up by $3600. People are angry, and rightly so. Many of the people making these decisions for us on Capital Hill represent Australians who were tertiary educated for free.
Scott Morrison is an example of this. He studied at the University of New South Wales and for the first three years he would have done so under the Whitlam model of university. His final honours year may have coincided with the introduction of HECs, which was a single payment of $1800 per student. Today his same qualification would cost a student roughly $48,000.
It can be frustrating to hear politicians talk about significant cuts to education clinically, but it's worth investigating the other players in these cuts and how they are equally responsible. There's a long history of university management working alongside government to further their own profit, despite recommendation from their academic staff and students.
In 2015, the biggest advocates for deregulation of fees were the chancellors of the Group Of 8 universities, which include Sydney University, Melbourne University, Monash, Australian National University and the University of New South Wales.
"I would rather pay taxes for good quality services rather than excessive fees for Australian university education — which is not even world leading despite its price."
Over the past week I've heard countless criticism of the government and seen the mobilisation of students ready to