The new uni-fees schedule rates a 'C' for economics and equity

Personable Gonski Institute import Pasi Sahlberg told ABC he couldn't get a Finnish teaching guernsey, in his younger days.

In aspirational Australia, plush parents won't hurry heirs, into the $3,700 disciplines. They know the best loot's elsewhere.

Here's where the package might eat further, into our floundering social mobility. As the profs couch it, "different pricing of subjects works against social equity".

In equity terms, graduate starting salaries reveal little. More telling are (private sector) occupational earnings. Three years after graduation, medicine, dentistry, engineering, and law, have already jumped ahead.

Really lucrative careers cluster in law, business and finance, medicine and engineering. For all Malcolm Turnbull's cautions, lucky graduates can glom eye-watering loot.

Unsurprisingly, students heft big contributions, for these types of degrees. Law & Economics, Management & Commerce, go onto $14,500 annually. At $11,300 and $7,700, Medicine/Dentistry and Engineering are still substantial.

Chump change, in well-heeled households. Tougher ask, for ordinary families and students.

Maybe it doesn't matter. Two-fifths of school-leavers already do uni. Those "world-leading" loans, so they say, neutralise the big tickets on desirable degrees. Debates about elite students, they also say, are "stale". After all, nobody likes the "politics of envy".

Or maybe, it does matter. With easy access to the vastly better resources of private (church) schools, children of managers and professionals are much more likely to reach uni than working-class kids. They can be groomed for prestige unis and lucrative degrees that generally require higher ATAR scores.

When Morrison says "too many" kids do uni, more should "aspire" to trades, that wouldn't resonate, in Double Bay or Toorak. Parents there are better advised, to send their scions through economics or law. Whereby they can reproduce the social order.

Meanwhile, Australian women (especially private school alumnae) keep on acing uni entry. Then, as graduates, earn much less than the men. You guessed, a lot of them do nursing and teaching. Tehan's discount courses.

Quite likely, that traditionally lucrative degrees will still offer solid earnings premiums. Other COVID-era graduates-Tehan dubs them the "Costello Baby Boom" generation-might be in hock for a while. They're supposed to be grateful, for no $100,000 degrees. Not just yet.

Quite unlikely, that Tehan will "shelve" (the profs again) legislation for the package. That might happen, in the art-house movie version.

If this unfolds like the usual B-movie (e) the package goes through (f) key officials are promoted (g) student "customers" wear the pain (h) later comes the "independent" review.