Education minister Christopher Pyne was confronted by angry students today at Monash University in Melbourne.
Around 30 students gathered outside the forum where Pyne was speaking, only to be denied entry by security guards.
“It was a disgrace”, said Declan Murphy, one of the education public affairs officers in the Monash Student Association. “If Christopher Pyne is going to come to our university and outline his plans for the Americanisation of our education system, he should at least have the courage to face students and answer their questions.”
Having been denied entry, students chanted and demonstrated outside. When Pyne left the venue, students attempted to question him, but he ran away to his car.
National Union of Students education officer Sarah Garnham said, “It seems Pyne’s experience on QandA Monday night has made him more hostile than ever to any interaction with the students whose education he is meant to be responsible for.”
It’s not surprising that Pyne didn’t want Monash students to hear his speech, because they would have found it deeply concerning. In it, he foreshadowed a major overhaul of higher education, which will allow universities much greater freedom to set whatever fees they like.
According to Pyne, higher education regulations aimed at ensuring student access or equity are a sure sign of communism. “The Soviet system was disbanded long ago but government control of universities in Australia lingers”, he said. “While the government no longer tells universities how many bachelor degree students they can take, it continues to dictate how much students are charged for their place.”
If Pyne gets his way, higher education in Australia will be transformed into an American-style system, with a few ultra-expensive universities like Harvard and Yale for the sons and daughters of the rich, but totally inaccessible to most of the population. In Pyne’s future, the university system, far from being a social leveller, will be a means to widen the gap between rich and poor and cement the class system in place.
Pyne covered this aim with guff about Australia having “the best education system in the world”. By this he doesn’t mean an education system that guarantees access to all, whatever background they come from. His version of “best” means universities as profitable corporations that provide a closeted, elite education for the children of the establishment.
Pyne’s speech was, appropriately enough, given at a function for the Australian National Fabrication Facility.
