Fees free helping wealthy families

Derek Cheng reports:

The Government's flagship fees-free policy appears to have seen a rise in high school students from wealthier neighbourhoods going to university, according to data released under the Official Information . …

According to the data, fees-free appears to have boosted the proportion of decile 6 to 10 students going to university, while the proportion of students from declie 1 to 5 attending non-university tertiary study fell.

Excluding students where the decile was unknown, decile 6 to 10 students made up 68 per cent of fees-free students, up from 62 per cent from the 2017 group.

This policy is projected to eventually cost $1.2 billion a year and the two things it has achieved are:

  • Fewer people overall undertaking tertiary education
  • The bulk of the fees free going to students from wealthy backgrounds

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