The ASA is greatly concerned for the future of professional education for archivists within the higher education sector. The networked digital world provides lots of opportunities and challenges for archives in terms of preservation of electronic records and online access to archival holdings, but to do these things properly archives need adequate funding and suitably qualified professional staff. Opportunities for postgraduate study in archives have been severely affected in recent years by the elimination of HECS for postgraduate courses and its replacement by full-fee paying courses. The introduction of full fees for postgraduate diploma and masters courses has caused a noticeable drop in enrolments in university archives and records courses and was a significant contributing factor in the demise last year of Australia's first archives course, established in 1973 at the University of New South Wales. Our profession is not particularly well-paid and students attracted to the discipline do not have the expectation of substantial earnings on graduation.
Few individuals have the ability to pay full fees upfront.
Also, assistance by employers with fees is unusual in our industry. Under these circumstances, the ASA is concerned that before too long all university courses in archives and records could disappear in the near future. Thus the ASA welcomes in principle the proposed Postgraduate Education Loans Scheme as a means of alleviating this particular problem in the delivery of postgraduate archives courses. Archives are a vital component of the national research infrastructure and significant portions of the archival resources of the nation are located in universities. Universities are covered by state and Commonwealth archives and related legislation including FOI and as such have a raft of obligations to create, maintain and retrieve their records over time.