University fees to be reviewed nationwide in next phase of education overhaul

University fees will be reviewed nationwide in the next phase of the Albanese government’s overhaul of student debt in a pitch to young voters tempted by the Greens.

A planned Australian Tertiary Education Commission would have the power to examine course fees, Education Minister Jason Clare confirmed on Tuesday, in a move that could undo Morrison-era changes that doubled the cost of some degrees while lowering maths and science course fees.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Education Jason Clare in parliament on Tuesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“Our intention is to also establish a commission that would be setting course fees into the future,” Clare said in Labor’s caucus meeting, according to a spokesman.

The government has this month announced a host of planned changes to tertiary education costs, including increasing the threshold for repayments and reducing the amount of income that people have to put towards their debts. But its biggest move is a plan to cut debts by 20 per cent.

Economists, education experts and the opposition have criticised the move, revealed in this masthead last week, as shortsighted because it benefits only those who currently have debts, rather than those starting university in future.

The government’s plans to review fees via the new commission, on which it will release details later this year, could address that criticism.

Crucial to the equation is the future of the Coalition-era Job-ready Graduates program, which doubled the cost of some arts degrees and lowered fees for maths and science.

Labor has said publicly that those changes failed because they did not reduce the number of humanities courses being delivered and instead saddled arts students with more debt, creating a perverse incentive for universities.

It is not clear if Labor will fully reverse the Morrison-era changes. But the new commission would work to try to rebalance the cost of degrees and reverse the distorted incentives, a source familiar with the matter said.

The Coalition has portrayed Labor’s debt wipe plan this week as a desperate cash splash that mirrors similar moves in the United States.

The opposition has also said the plan would benefit higher-income earners the most and this would be paid for by taxpayers, some of whom do not hold a degree.

Labor turned the heat on the Coalition in parliament, daring the opposition to stand in the way of debt relief.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Labor MPs in a caucus meeting that the Coalition was “lecturing people that they can’t have their debt reduced”, according to a party spokesman. “This is a fight we will win,” the spokesman quoted Albanese as saying.

Clare used question time on Tuesday to lay out Labor’s electoral motivations, saying the change would benefit between 18,000 and 26,000 people per seat in key electorates across the country.

“When most of us were at university back last century, university was a lot cheaper than it is today. Even in the early days, it was cheaper,” Clare said.

“Back then, students contributed on average about 30 per cent to the cost of a degree. Now students contribute more than 40 per cent, and this fixes this for a generation of Australians who got a uni degree in the last decade or so.”

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