University fee changes will put students into 20 years of debt

Under the Government’s new HELP debt plan, it could take uni students double the amount of time to pay off their student loans.

University degrees could take 20 years to pay off under the Government’s proposed HECS-HELP plan, with humanities and communications degrees taking the biggest hit.

Arts, humanities, communications and social science degrees could take twice as long to pay off as it does under the current system.

The plan puts a cap on what students can borrow from the Government to cover the costs of tertiary tuition fees which could put students into debt for decades.

Under the changes, fees for humanities and communications courses will more than double, and law and commerce students will be paying around 28 per cent more.

However, teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English, languages, maths and agriculture courses will drop by up to 62 per cent.

An independent Parliamentary Library modelling commissioned by the Greens, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, found that men studying a social science degree would take approximately 12 years to pay off their HELP debt compared to around six years currently. For women doing the same degree, it would take two more years to repay the debt than their male counterparts – 14 years compared to seven years now.

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Students are set to face decades of debt for their university degrees.

For men studying a communications degree, it would take 20 years to pay off their debts and for women doing the same degree it would take almost 17 years to pay the debt off compared to 8.5 years now.

The modelling is based on economic projections and salary data (with differences between men and women due to gender pay differences) but does not take into account the impact of the economic downturn due to COVID-19 and potential unemployment.

Meanwhile, Australian National University economist Bruce Chapman said by his own calculations a $20,000 fee hike for a humanities degree would mean increased repayments of “$4 a week, around the price of a cup of coffee” for a female graduate on a median income, the SMH reports.

The Government also proposed a new measure where a student who fails half of their first eight subjects in a degree would lose access to a government-subsided place and HELP loans in an effort to target students who amass debts by over-enrolling in subjects and sometimes at more than one institution.

Originally published as University fee changes will put students into 20 years of debt