By Simon Marginson. Australia’s decision to uncap university fees, announced in the budget last week, will for the first time expose Australian universities to unfettered market forces. It’s a decision that takes Australia’s higher education system into uncharted territory and precisely how it’s going to play out is difficult to predict. More...

By Beverley Head. University technology courses are caught in a vice with free online courses squeezing from the left and the government’s planned higher education changes from the right.  While the “demand driven” tertiary education model announced in the federal budget means universities can accept unlimited numbers of students and charge what they want, information and communication technology (ICT) courses are in a bind.  The budget’s extension of tuition subsidies to people studying with registered private providers, coupled with a growing range of free or inexpensive massive open online courses (MOOCs) by reputable providers, means that Australian universities are expecting unprecedented competition and don’t expect to be able to hike ICT course fees. More...

By John Ross. INTERNATIONAL students’ fees are the yardstick of what domestic students could face when tuition fees are deregulated, says University of Wollongong boss Paul Wellings.
The Australian government has made international fees a “surrogate price guide”, Professor Wellings said, because legislation prevents universities from charging domestic students more than they extract from overseas enrollees.
His comments follow HECS architect Bruce Chapman’s prediction that elite universities will quickly raise their fees to the levels collected from international students. More...

By Lauren Williams. In-state students could attend college for free and pay percentage of incomes back after graduation.
Michigan legislators have introduced a plan that would allow in-state college-bound students to attend college for free and then, as graduates, pay a percentage of their income back. Known as a “pay it forward” model, the money paid back would go into a special fund to help other students attend college using the same plan. More...

Many graduate students at the University of Manitoba are frustrated after learning the school wants to hike their fees.
Grad students pay a program fee in their first year plus a yearly “continuing fee” every year after that.
Right now, the continuing fee is $700 per year, but the Faculty of Graduate Studies wants to increase that incrementally to $3,000 a year by 2016 — an increase of nearly 330 per cent. More...