From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Thu Aug 09 2001 - 18:38:17 MDT
Alejandro wrote (hi there Alex, btw)
> * dwayne <dwayne@morphine.neuron.net> [010809 21:44]:
> > [ Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, converting... ]
> > > John Grigg wrote:
> > > > The aussie gal I used to know told me she went through a
> > > > college system where only the better highschool students get
> > > > to attend college(she was one). And you paid back the cost
> > > > of your education by paying a flat percentage of one's future
> > > > salary.
> > >
> > > That's my experience, too. The paying back bit is not so good :-)
> > >
> > > Emlyn
> > > (still under the HECS - Higher Education Contribution Scheme)
> >
> > Oh hell, I will reply.
> >
> > The better schools go to Uni because the students do better
> in the year 12 exams, there
> > is no restriction, it is based on merit, but of course the
> "good" schools give their
> > students a better education, so they are over-represented at unis.
> >
> this depends on which state you are from. in Queensland, the
> high school you
> attend has a huge influence on wether you get to attend uni
> or not since your
> final score is based on a combination of how you did compared
> to the rest of your
> class and how that class did compared with the rest of the
> classes in the
> state. there is no individual competition among every member
> in the state, so
> even if you top your class by a megaparsec, if your class average at a
> standardised skills test is low compared to other classes,
> you are going to end
> up with a mediocre score. This is all relatively new since
> it started in 1992.
I went through the same system (the ACT also does ASAT). Having high marks
is kind of weird, because your marks get standardised and normalised all
over the shop; if you are a couple of standard deviations out from the mean,
there is no predicting where your marks will end up; probably it's roughly
equivalent in complexity to the three-body problem.
Seriously though, getting into uni isn't too tricky here, especially if you
are wanting to do a straight science degree (as I did). The year that I
graduated from high school, I needed to be in the top 45% of graduates...
not a big ask!!! If you want to do law or medicine here, though, you might
want to look at min/maxing your marks somewhat :-)
>
> > As for paying off your education, it is apercentage of your
> salary, you pay it if you
> > earn more thana certain threshold, and you pay back the
> debt, not a flat rate on your
> > salary for life.
> >
> i don't think he was implying you had to pay for life.
No, I wasn't. Although it does tend to take a while to pay off. If you get a
general Bachelor of Arts, I think the stats say that you are likely to never
pay it all back.
The system, for those who are interested, is that there are a series of
income bracket / percentage pairs, so that you pay a percentage of your
gross income back in HECS.
Predictably, when the scheme was brought in it was pretty gentle (don't pay
anything back unless you are earning at least 28K, and max repayment was
about 4% of income I think). That's been changed in recent years, such that
people earning about 20K now have to pay 2% of their gross income back per
annum, and such that I've been paying back 6% of mine for the last few
years.
I had a pretty large debt (over 15K, due to my gaining a 3 year BSc in a bit
over 10 years). However, younger people are in more strife, because the cost
per course increased dramatically a few years ago. Now it's something on the
order of 5K+ per year for courses like medicine and law.
We used to have free, meritocratic entry education here, which is fine by
me. This HECS system is kind of crappy in comparison. However, I'd still
support it over people having to pay for their degrees up front. Basically,
under that kind of system I would not have a degree.
Emlyn
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