Universities to be fined for dropout degrees

Universities will be stripped of taxpayer funding for poor-­quality courses with high failure rates, in a crackdown on dodgy degrees starting next year.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Tertius Pickard

Universities will be stripped of taxpayer funding for poor-­quality courses with high failure rates, in a crackdown on dodgy degrees starting next year.

Orders to refund tuition fees, and fines of $18,780 a student, will be slapped on universities that fail to provide practical support to struggling students, under new guidelines released by federal Education Minister Jason Clare for public comment yesterday.

As many universities lower academic entry standards to enrol more fee-paying students, the proposed changes would make them financially accountable for students’ performance.

From 2024, all universities will be forced to “identify, protect and provide support” for vulnerable students – including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders – at risk of failing.

Systems must be in place to alert universities when a student is at risk of failing units of study – preferably before the “census’’ date when students are locked into their degrees and begin accumulating HELP (Higher Education Loan Program) debt.

Targeted literacy, numeracy and other academic supports must be provided to students struggling to finish their degrees.

Universities must also offer fin­ancial assistance, housing information and mental health supports to students.

“This is particularly important as many students struggle due to non-academic issues,’’ the guidelines state.

Universities will have to proactively offer “special consideration’’ and adjust academic marks for students affected by a “significant life event’’, such as serious illness, death of a loved one, divorce or homelessness.

The Albanese government is also considering giving domestic students the same safeguards as international students attending Australian universities.

Under existing rules, universities must offer “reasonable support at no additional cost’’ to international students to help them pass the course.

Opposition education spokeswoman Senator Sarah Henderson criticised the guidelines as “chaotic policy on the run’’.

“More than 3 million Australians have just been hit with a 7.1 per cent increase in their (HELP) debt thanks to Labor’s sky-high inflation rate’’ she said.

“Mr Clare needs to do a much better job at holding universities to account for poor completion rates which leave many students with a massive debt and very little to show for it.’’

The former Coalition’s “Job Ready Graduates’’ legislation banned students from borrowing any more money through the HELP scheme if they failed more than half their subjects in the year but Mr Clare wants to scrap the 50 per cent pass rule after discovering that disadvantaged students made up most of the 13,000 undergraduates who dropped out of their degrees last year.

“We should be helping students to succeed – not forcing them to quit,’’ he said on Wednesday. “We need more Australians going to university, not less.’’

Under Mr Clare’s proposed reforms, universities will have to tell the federal Education Department how many students in each faculty have failed half their course each year.

Universities must also reveal how much HELP debt has been racked up “on failed units of study, per student and overall’’.

If the department discovers a university has failed to follow a “student support policy’’, it could impose fines of up to $18,780 for each student affected. “The aim of these penalties is not to affect … providers merely because they have students that fail, where they have a compliant policy and diligently apply it,’’ the consultation paper states.