Friday 29th of March 2024

advertising misinformation about higher education...

exorbitant fees...

The Abbott government has splashed more than $8 million of taxpayer money on a media blitz promoting its stalled higher education reforms.

Fairfax Media can reveal the government has spent $5.4 million on media bookings for the campaign, which has infuriated key Senate crossbenchers. 

This comes on top of $2.3 million spent on the design of the advertisements and $560,000 on focus groups and market research.

...

A spokesman for Education Minister Christopher Pyne said: "Research has shown that misinformation about key aspects of the proposed higher education reforms is making it difficult for prospective students and their parents to make decisions about their future.

"The government's higher education campaign is compliant with advertising guidelines and costs are reasonable for the services being provided."

...

The campaign has angered Senate crossbenchers whose votes will be crucial for the government to pass its reforms. 

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has called the campaign "party political advertising paid for by taxpayers" while Palmer United Party Senate leader Glenn Lazarus described it as an "underhanded ... propaganda campaign".

Senator Xenophon said governments should be banned from spending taxpayer money on advertising unless its policies have become law. 

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the campaign was a "total waste of money". 

 

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-government-spends-8-million-on-higher-education-media-blitz-20150110-12lcb8.html

the placebo effect...

Profit-making colleges would receive taxpayer funding to teach students unproven alternative remedies such as homeopathy, flower essence therapy and iridology under the Abbott government's proposed higher education reforms.

The move comes as the government considers stripping the private health insurance rebate from any policies covering natural therapies not supported by evidence.

As well as deregulating university fees and cutting university funding, the government's higher education reforms would extend funding to private colleges, TAFEs and sub-bachelor degree programs at a cost of $820 million over three years.

Accredited private colleges would become eligible for grants of $6323 a year for each student enrolled in courses such as homeopathy, naturopathy and mind body medicine. This is more than public universities would receive per student studying law, economics, languages or the humanities under the new funding structure.
The Australasian College of Natural Therapies, for example, would be eligible for subsidies for its Bachelor of Health Science (Naturopathy), which teaches students homeopathy, iridology and Bach flower therapy.

It would be "absolutely unacceptable" to give taxpayer money to such colleges, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of NSW John Dwyer said.

"TEQSA [the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency] has dropped the ball by approving these courses," Professor Dwyer, who is also president of Friends of Science in Medicine, said. "It should de-accredit colleges teaching homeopathy and other pseudo-scientific treatments as if they are credible health options for Australians."

Students at such colleges currently receive government loans but must pay full fees.

A major study released last year by the National Health and Medical Research Council found no compelling evidence that homeopathy, which uses highly diluted substances to treat symptoms, is effective.

Multiple studies have had found iridology, which uses marks and colour changes in the eye to diagnose problems in the kidney, liver and other organs, to be no more effective than a placebo.


http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/taxpayers-to-fund-teaching-of-pseudoscience-20150110-12i8fa.html

 

Most medical treatments rely on the placebo effect. That some medicine are more effective that others often rely on the doctor/patient trust and the ability of some "drugs" to mask the pain and others that encourage "healing"... Some medicine are quite dangerous with side effects, while the "placebo effect" of alternative treatments is far less dangerous in most situation, whether the treatment is effective or not.

It is proven for example that massage can relieve some pain, whether the massage is perform on the pained part (massage should NOT be performed on cancerous part for example) or other part of the body. What is important here is the ability to relax, soon reducing pain tension and letting the body start self-healing. Self-healing is about 90 per cent of getting better in many cases. Extra help can come from various ways, including the drastic and necessary intervention of surgery.

When we break a bone, most of what is done by medical intervention, is making sure the broken pieces are realigned properly, but the body itself fixes the break.

Paying government cash to "private" colleges who teach alternative medicine is commendable but removing cash from public institutions is a sin — a crime against secular democracy.