I know this is meant to be satirical, but does anyone really have a problem with the concept?

Here is my piece published in the Education Review magazine recently:

With the regularity of a tatty Halloween prop brought out each year to scare the children, student politicians and student media can be relied upon to produce articles warning of the dire consequences of ‘voluntary membership’. When reading articles about the impact of voluntary membership of student associations, it’s helpful to remember one thing: compulsory membership is all about money. In particular, it’s about student politicians retaining uncontrolled access to your money.

Think about this. This year vuwsa received over $1.5 million in levies taken from students. This is very unusual income; it’s unlike any income received by other types of incorporated societies. vuwsa has not earned this income. vuwsa has not persuaded people to join the association and pay the fee. vuwsa has not sold its membership to individuals who have purchased membership because they want to access the services that vuwsa offers and believe the fee is good value for money. vuwsa never has to go out to students and ask them to become members.

Instead, students have paid the vuwsa levy because they must before they can receive an education at Victoria University. vuwsa free rides on people who want to receive a tertiary education. If you try to enrol without paying your $131.90 to vuwsa, your application won’t even be processed. Did I mention yet that the levy is set by vuwsa itself, with no legal limit on what it can be?

As you can imagine, this situation is extremely advantageous for vuwsa. The organisation knows it has a captive market. Even if it fails to meet the needs of individual members, wastes money and misrepresents students, vuwsa knows those same students will have to pay $1.5 million to the association if they want to study next year.