Surprise Budget changes to enabling courses including Newstep, and Newcastle University’s Open Foundation or Yapug program for Indigenous students, will hit regional universities, and particularly Newcastle University, hardest, said the university’s English Language and Foundation Studies Centre director Seamus Fagan.

Enabling courses provide access to university for people who do not have the qualifications for direct entry to a degree program. Enabling course students make up 20 per cent of Newcastle University’s annual intake, and 27 per cent of students at the university are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

In the Budget the government announced an end to an enabling course “loading” of $3271 per student universities had received, recommending fees of up to that amount instead. The government will also fix the number of available enabling course places from 2019.  

The proposed changes will have twin negative effects, Associate Professor Fagan said.

The new enabling course fee of up to $3271 from 2018 will block many students from even considering tertiary education “because of the precariousness of their financial situation and because they don’t want to incur a debt”, Associate Professor Fagan said.

The government also proposes putting the delivery of enabling courses out to tender in 2019, opening the way for providers from the non-university sector. Newcastle University’s success in the enabling course area, with the biggest and oldest program that currently teaches 16 per cent of Australia’s total number of enabling course students, will leave it as the biggest loser under tendering arrangements.

The government argued 61 per cent of students in fee-paying enabling courses completed them, while only 52 per cent of students in free courses like Newcastle University’s enabling courses completed their studies.

Associate Professor Fagan said the figures were unfair because they compared completion rates for 340 fee-paying students against about 12,000 in free courses across Australia, including Newcastle University.

He said Newcastle would get less places under the tendering program, and the twin negative impacts of reduced places and a fee of $3200 would have to have the greatest impact on students who were already disadvantaged.

“In areas like the Hunter and the Central Coast the percentage of people undertaking tertiary education is already a lot lower than other parts of the country. Programs like Newstep, Open Foundation and Yapug rectify the situation by providing another pathway for people,” Associate Professor Fagan said.

University of Newcastle Vice-Chancellor Caroline McMillen said it was a positive that the government had retained enabling programs, but for many students university study was “a tough road and I don’t want to make it any tougher”.

Associate Professor Fagan said universities that supported enabling programs, like Newcastle, University of Southern Queensland and Southern Cross University, recognised that making tertiary education available to disadvantaged members of the community was “part of our contribution to our communities”.

“Newcastle University has a long history of caring for that group of people and we want that to continue,” he said.