Your degree was given a price tag in Canberra.
A fisheries student is charged about $14,000 for a degree. An arts student is charged $52,000. Same campus, same HELP loan, one debt nearly four times the other. You do not set that price, and neither does your university. Canberra does.
A Fisheries Studies student is charged about $14,000 for their degree. An Arts student is charged $52,000. Same campus, same HELP loan. One debt is nearly four times the other.
You do not choose that price, and neither does your university. The government sets it. In 2020 it began pricing degrees by what it wanted you to study, rather than what they cost to teach.
The Commonwealth puts $32,400 into a fisheries place and $1,316 into an arts one per year. So the arts student pays nearly four times as much, for the place the government funds least. They now cover 93% of it themselves.
The scheme was sold as a nudge into job-ready fields. The Minister has said, plainly, that it has failed.
It falls on the same people. Low-income enrolments in Law, the most expensive band, have fallen almost 20%. Around a third of First Nations students sit in the fields hit hardest, with the greatest debt. Women, who fill those fields and earn less, carry the debt longest: an arts graduate clears it at 37, a nurse at 30.
And the debt barely ends. Most countries write it off in time, Australia sets no limit. You repay it, or you die still owing.
Read our latest thought leadership paper below.