University unions are struggling to attract genuine engagement.
In the same week Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced plans for a bold – but not, like, ‘Whitlam’ bold – ‘Education Crusade’ for Australian education, I got an interesting email.
Dear student
A reminder that the student services and amenities fee (SSAF) is being
introduced at RMIT this month, following changes to Australian
Government legislation.
In 2012, the maximum amount a full-time student will pay is $263 and
students will be charged on a pro-rata basis.
Surely enough, rumblings soon appeared online – my Facebook feed, hitherto occupied almost exclusively by Call Me Maybe memes and Instagram selfies, started to feature indignant statuses calling the fee a waste of money.
As one friend simply put it: “It’s just money I could better spend elsewhere.”
Understandably, some of my more student union friendly peers would baulk at such a mercantile attitude towards education funding.
In their eyes, the fee is a worthy sacrifice that rewards students with a host of new services to enhance their own tertiary community and personal wellbeing.
On the other hand, most students seem comfortable with contextualising their relationship with their university as an entirely commercial exchange.
They understand modern universities are superficially benevolent institutions that never forget the financial boundaries of the exchange, like a good-natured barmaid who lets you run up a hefty tab.
Another, perhaps more cynical friend, said he’d be more than willing to cough up the cash if he wasn’t so sure his university was going to squander it.
And reading through RMIT’s list of additional services funded by the newly introduced SSAF, I’m not sure his fears will be allayed. It says the fee will enable, among other things:
- Free dance classes for students on campus
- Development of a careers online learning ‘toolkit’
- A student union engagement officer
- Increased publication of the campus magazine (at a cost of $10,000)
It’s a small selection, true, but somehow I can’t help but think it reads like tokenistic assortment of academic accessories.
How many students will genuinely commute their way to campus for a free jazz-hands tutorial when some won’t even commit to attending lectures?
Ultimately, there are bigger issues than a $263 bill at play though. The real question is why isn’t the Government, with all its impressive education-related rhetoric coughing up the dosh itself?
Or, perhaps even more pertinently, why do universities have to charge students money to establish campus ‘community’? Shouldn’t it just happen, naturally? (You know what’s even better than free dance classes? A PARTY.)
My gut feeling is, most contemporary students just aren’t interested in the traditional, institutional modes of community.
Not only are we a generation of individualists, but we’re a generation of iPhone-toting individualists – our community is viral, mobile and intangible. It’s also free.
Somewhat ironically, the invention of a few too-clever-for-their-own-good Harvard kids has actually eroded the historical role of the physical campus as a site of debate, protest and, among other things, picking up.
Facebook is now the soapbox upon which students muster their political forces, voice their political gripes and, on this particular occasion, argue about the pros and cons of a student services and amenities fee.
When we leave the university campus, the community of studenthood continues – it bleeds into our everyday movements, whether it’s through a shout-out status (“HOLY CRAP GUYS – THE ESSAY WAS DUE YESTERDAY?! FML.”) or a well-run Memespace.
For those who consider such social communities less valuable than the original, physical form, this is a shame. In the place of passionate riots and rallies on campus, we’ve distilled our tertiary community into an iPhone app.
But the moratoria were nearly 50 years ago. And besides students back then were, like, ‘Whitlam’ bold.
