
Action Regarding 12.8% Increase to UOW MBBS Tuition


We have started this petition to address the tuition increase that has occurred this year. The UOW University Council approved a 12.8% increase in the tuition fees for the MBBS program; the 2013 tuition of $47,000 AUD has risen to $53,000 AUD for the 2014 year.
While the international student
body does not begrudge the University for raising fees, as an increase was
foreseen and agreed upon, we would like to make it known that we feel this
significant increase places an undue hardship on students who are already under
a large amount of financial pressure. If increases
of this magnitude were to continue, many of us would not be able to afford our
final year of tuition.
We feel that our concern is justified for the following reasons:
The University released a letter stating that, “from 2014, fees will increase for UOW courses by
an average of 5% at undergraduate level, 8% at postgraduate coursework level
and 9% for research programs.” The 12.8% increase seen with the MBBS is well
above any of these yet no explanation was given as to why we are seeing a
substantially larger increase. The MBBS program is classified as an
undergraduate degree by the Commonwealth Register of
Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students. Therefore, one would expect the
increase to reflect increases seen with the other undergraduate courses.
The aforementioned letter also
explains that the, “fee increases are offset by [a] generous range of
scholarships”, however the vast majority of these scholarships are not
available to international students. To be more precise, there are eleven
scholarships available for MBBS students studying at the GSM. Of these, only two
are available to international students. The total value of these scholarships is
$2000; far short of offsetting even this year’s increase, let alone the total
sum. Additionally, we have seen no added benefit from this increase in terms of
resources, services available, or scholarships.
It was also stated in the letter
that the fee increases, “are required…to reflect delivery costs…[and] UOW’s
pricing relative to competitor institutions and relevant competitor
disciplines.” We are aware that tuition fees fluctuate according to the cost of
delivery of education and in relation to relevant competition. However, the
average increase seen in the past 9 years from other medical schools has been ~5.2%.
Additionally, the rate of inflation, as reported by the Australian Bureau of
Statistics for the fourth quarter of 2013, was 2.7% with a forecasted rate of
2.54% for both the first and second quarters of 2014. Therefore, inflation
cannot account for such a large increase either.
We also noted that UOW lacks
legislation for the protection of its students regarding tuition increases.
Many other institutions have specific policies to limit these increases. For
example, ANU has a policy stating that, “all domestic and international tuition
fee paying students continuing in their current program of study will not pay
more than a 5% increase, compounded each year, from the year of commencement of
their program.” Flinders also has a policy stating that, “the quoted fee is a
base fee that will be subject to an annual increase of up to 9% (in line with
inflation) for each of the subsequent years of the program.” We feel that UOW
should have a similar policy in place to protect their international students.
In light of all of this, we feel that this tuition increase is unjustified and unacceptably large. The international MBBS students are proud to attend this program but these issues have raised concerns in the student body. We very much hope that we can come to a mutually agreeable conclusion to help restore the confidence of the student body that UOW has their best interests at heart.
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