Honi Soit
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    Trending
    • UTS POC Revue 2023: The Apocalypse  
    • “You cannot pause ethnic cleansing”: Sydney students call for permanent end to genocide and occupation in Palestine
    • CAPA Board Passes Motion Removing SUPRA Voting Rights 
    • The momentary victory of mass politics: reflections on Kissinger and Australia
    • “We are freedom fighters”: pro-Palestinian protestors march amidst end to seven-day ceasefire
    • An invitation in: SCA’s ‘New Contemporaries’
    • NTEU to delay new fixed-term contract limits that fail to cover higher-education workers
    • Mohammed Shami: The Muslim cricketer who carried an Islamophobic nation to the Men’s Cricket World Cup Final
    • About
    • Print Edition
    • Advertise
    • Locations
    • Contact
    Facebook Instagram X (Twitter) TikTok
    Honi SoitHoni Soit
    Friday, December 8
    • News
    • Analysis
    • Culture
    • Opinion
    • University
    • Features
    • Perspective
    • Investigation
    • Reviews
    Honi Soit
    Home»Analysis

    The summer school trap

    By Nick BonyhadyApril 11, 2016 Analysis 5 Mins Read
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

    In her welcome post, Dr Jillian Stewart, Director of the University of Sydney Summer School, provides a few reasons why students might choose to spend their holidays studying at summer or winter school: “To catch up on subjects in which they may have been unsuccessful, manage the demands of their normal semester programs much better, or accelerate their progress towards their degree.” What she does not mention is that the University will charge students who take up her pitch roughly four times as much as those who study during semester, for no clear reason.

    This year, if a domestic undergraduate student takes an English subject during semester time, they either pay $769 or defer that amount to HECS, a loan with no interest or fees. If the same student took that subject during summer or winter school, they would pay $3700 – a fee that can’t be put on HECS.

    FEE-HELP, another loan scheme, is available, but it comes with a 25 per cent fee, bringing the total cost of an English unit to $4625. That is an impossible cost for many students to bear. The difference in cost between a summer school subject on FEE-HELP and a regular semester subject on HECS is a difference of $3856 – enough to cover a whole semester of regular full-time study.

    For some students, the extra cost of summer school is still worth it to finish a degree earlier or to fit in more extra-curricular activities during semester. But for others who are taking it to re-attempt failed subjects – who constitute “approximately a third” of enrolments, according to a university spokesperson – or to get back on track after taking time off for personal reasons, the additional stress of paying for summer school can be a huge burden.

    But here’s the rub: the University does not have to charge more for summer school than during semester. The Higher Education Support Act allows universities to make a choice. They can receive Commonwealth funding for summer school, make HECS available and limit prices to standard semester rates or declare summer school full fee, remove the option of HECS and receive no Commonwealth funding.

    A University spokesperson claimed that “no student is disadvantaged” by summer school because all summer units are also available during semester – a structure that the legislation forces the University to adopt if it wants to set its own fees. However, if the University instead chose Commonwealth support and lower prices, it could still make all summer units accessible during semester. Moreover, this decision does not explain why the University has chosen to set fees so high.   

    Part of the cost of summer school is explained by the fact that the University needs to make up for the federal funding it has chosen not to receive. However, for an English subject, that would only be $692, which still leaves an unexplained gap of over $2000 between summer school and semester study.

    So why the spike in cost? Some of the money may be for paying academics for teaching outside semester. It is also possible that keeping buildings open over summer costs more, but staff need access regardless and otherwise the University’s investment in infrastructure would be wasted for months each year.

    Not all universities charge their students so much over summer, including some of Sydney’s closest competitors. Summer school fees at UNSW (except for their business school) are the same as semester fees and HECS is available. UTS’s new trimester model has the same outcome.
    Back in 2003, even Sydney did not charge more for summer school. Legislation at the time required that Commonwealth supported students pay the same amount for their subjects, no matter when in the year they took them. According to Brendan Nelson, then Education Minister, the option of charging full fees was only reintroduced after “ongoing consultation with the higher education sector” in 2004 – and extended to winter school two years later. Certainly, these changes to allow higher fees were not made at students’ urging.

    Aside from an SRC petition in 2014, there has been little recent dissent about summer and winter school fees at Sydney, but there is not universal agreement either. Mark Warburton, a former senior public servant at the Department of Education who administered university funding until 2014 said:

    “An innovative and efficient 21st century university that is concerned to maximise and support the learning experience of students should not need to use the legislative provisions for summer and winter schools.  They probably should have been removed when the Government sought to eliminate undergraduate fee paying and provide Commonwealth support for all domestic undergraduate students studying at university.” 

    In light of other universities’ ability to offer similar units over the same period for less, this raises questions about whether Sydney’s pricing scheme is justified by its costs or an unfair attempt to raise revenue at students’ expense.

    HECS HELP jillian stewart summer school University of Sydney winter school

    Keep Reading

    Mohammed Shami: The Muslim cricketer who carried an Islamophobic nation to the Men’s Cricket World Cup Final

    Moving beyond the theoretical: Privacy law reform in Australia

    Accessible thesis

    Beyond the Royal Commission

    Disability, Disabled, Different: Demystifying the Disarray

    Inaccessible Institutions?: Barriers to Disability Inclusion at Universities

    Just In

    UTS POC Revue 2023: The Apocalypse  

    December 8, 2023

    “You cannot pause ethnic cleansing”: Sydney students call for permanent end to genocide and occupation in Palestine

    December 7, 2023

    CAPA Board Passes Motion Removing SUPRA Voting Rights 

    December 7, 2023

    The momentary victory of mass politics: reflections on Kissinger and Australia

    December 6, 2023
    Editor's Picks

    Puff, puff, pass: What does cannabis legalisation mean for student communities?

    November 1, 2023

    Privacy is not dead, yet

    October 26, 2023

    ‘A patchwork quilt of repression’: The disappearing right to protest in NSW

    October 17, 2023

    The lights are on, but no one’s home: inside USyd’s International House

    October 10, 2023
    Facebook Instagram X (Twitter) TikTok

    From the mines

    • News
    • Analysis
    • Higher Education
    • Culture
    • Features
    • Investigation
    • Comedy
    • Editorials
    • Letters
    • Misc

     

    • Opinion
    • Perspective
    • Profiles
    • Reviews
    • Science
    • Social
    • Sport
    • SRC Reports
    • Tech

    Admin

    • About
    • Editors
    • Send an Anonymous Tip
    • Write/Produce/Create For Us
    • Print Edition
    • Locations
    • Archive
    • Advertise in Honi Soit
    • Contact Us

    We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. The University of Sydney – where we write, publish and distribute Honi Soit – is on the sovereign land of these people. As students and journalists, we recognise our complicity in the ongoing colonisation of Indigenous land. In recognition of our privilege, we vow to not only include, but to prioritise and centre the experiences of Indigenous people, and to be reflective when we fail to be a counterpoint to the racism that plagues the mainstream media.

    © 2023 Honi Soit
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms
    • Accessibility

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.