The debate has made Christopher Pyne one of the most controversial education ministers Australia has ever had. 

In 1972 Gough Whitlam said - "We believe that a student's merit, rather than a parent's wealth, should decide who should benefit from the community's vast financial commitment to tertiary education."

It’s an interesting sentiment and one that still rings true, however it seems to have come full circle. 

In light of the recent move to create fee deregulation I thought it imperative to provide reasoning behind such a move by the Australian government.  

Firstly, it’s about middle-class kids no longer having so much of their tuition paid for by lower-class families.  

Taxpayers fund the cost of tuition, which means much of the poor, or lower-class, subsidise  university education. Many people see it as unfair that these people have to fund the education of people who will go off and earn big dollars as a result of their degrees.

This is seen by the Australian government as middle-class welfare, or so they say. 

I studied at university for six years and received an education in three degrees. My parents are within the middle class. They have four children and three of the four of us attended university. My sister studied Chemical Engineering, my brother is currently studying Physiotherapy and I studied Journalism, Law and Literature. 

Combining these fees my parents would have needed over $150,000 to pay for our education. And it’s not just the tuition itself, we were forced to leave a rural town to study, which meant accommodation, food, clothing, and medical etc. My hard-working parents would have been unable to give us these opportunities.

Deregulation is also about a path to the sustainable funding of universities. The government says without it there will be larger classes and while students won’t pay as much they will have less of an experience at university. The Coalition has made it clear that it is hypocritical to contest fee deregulation when we are demanding greater tertiary education.

My experience however, from the large classes I was in, is that people are still keen to learn. The people that are undertaking courses do it voluntarily, and if students want to learn they will.

In my first year I did struggle to make decent grades and while this could have been related to maturity, I think mainly it was because I was paying for everything for the first time. It was a shock to discover that feeling of independence.

Perhaps if the Federal Government is truly worried about putting the financial burden on the lower-class, why not simply put a regulation on the alumni to pay back into the facilities they were educated in. For example, if a doctor studied at Wollongong University earning over a particular threshold, they would be forced to pay a percentage back to the institution. 

Would this not make more sense than putting newly graduated high school students immediately in debt before they can even experience the world? Or in some cases figure out what they really want?

Education should be treasured in Australia, not something just for the wealthy.