Tertiary education is a vital component of our civilization, providing essential skills for the survival of modern society. Tertiary education spawns the doctors, lawyers, teachers and academics of tomorrow, in a perpetual cycle of training and intellectual development. From the point of view of our children, tertiary education is an essential beacon of hope, an aspiration for the future, for prospects in later life. For all the benefits of education to degree level there are many drawbacks, namely finance.

Full-time students have very little time to earn money on their own. With bills to pay like everyone else, the full time student also has to hold down the equivalent to a part time job to scrape enough money to survive. Add to that the pressures of having to pay for your tuition and fork our several hundred dollars each semester on books, and you’re talking about extreme poverty. Surely this can not be right, that the talent we need as a nation is forced through terrible conditions, well below the poverty line, until they qualify with a ton of debt against their name.