But I became editor of my uni mag, Entropy, as well as editorial assistant at the more high-brow uni circular, freelance design, organising rallies and fryups for starving kids and co-hosted a uni radio show. No matter how much we cajoled, bullied, threatened or offered free CDs, we couldn’t get people involved in the mag or student radio for love nor money. People Just. Don’t. Care. Saying it’s down to poverty is a copout. I was eating out of bins and still managed to be active on-campus. Kids these days think a career will just happen for them with nil extra-curricular effort and they already have mates so why make more. There’s no excuse for plain old raw sloth and I think that’s what we’re dealing with here.

University education should be free and students should be studying full time. Part of that education experience should involve wide reading and study outside subjects that students are enrolled in as well as large volumes of socializing, extra-curricular activities, travel, loafing around, thinking and dreaming.

The quality of our civilization rests fundamentally on the quality of the education that university students receive. To spend the equivalent of two or more days at work cuts deeply into the quality of the learning that people get, wasting not just their own time but also that of the academics teaching students. The pressures of juggling study, part time work and student loans must also increase the drop out rate leading to further waste. And to impose student loans on young people must be a bar to people from more straightened economic circumstances undertaking university study and is therefore socially regressive and wasteful of human potential.

In my own case I earned a mediocre degree despite attending a fine university (Sydney) and being taught by some brilliant people such as Professors John O. Ward and Frank B. Tipton. The problem was not my ability but simply that I had to put a huge amount of effort into keeping body and soul together through part time work (30 hours a week).

Australia is a rich country and getting richer. We can afford free tertiary education, grants to cover living expenses, wide participation and full time study which will yield a stronger economy and a more advanced civilization. A highly educated work force will generate higher economic value and will be able to fund full time high quality university education through higher tax payments. If we assume a full time four year degree costs $160,000 and the reciepient has a forty year working career then that person only has to pay an extra $4,000 in current year dollars to fund the cash costs of the degree. The economic value created for our society by a unversity education is much higher.