Millions of young Australians could pay $1,000 less a year on student loans by “restructuring the HECS-HELP system to make it fairer and simpler”.
Education Minister Jason Clare flagged the potential change following the publication of the biggest review of the higher education system on Sunday.
The Universities Deal published the review calling on the government to make multiple changes, including doubling the number of university places by 2050.
Recommendations also included reducing fees and increasing the country’s tertiary education completion rate from 60 to 80 percent over the next 25 years.
The most notable suggestions were to cut HECS-HELP payments and introduce a tiered payment structure where lower-income graduates would pay less.
“For example, if we went this route, it is said that someone with an income of $75,000 a year would pay about $1,000 less each year,” Mr. Clare said.
Stephen Billett, a professor at Griffith University, said he supported some of the reforms, especially the reduced HECS payments.
“While this amount may not seem like a big deal, it will be welcome,” he told Daily Mail Australia.
Millions of young Australians could save $1,000 less a year on student loans by “restructuring the HECS-HELP system to make it fairer and simpler”.
The review of the University Agreement has called on the government to double the number of university places by 2050 and reduce fees for certain subjects.
“It is a statement about the recognition of the difficult circumstances faced by Australian tertiary students.”
The Albanian government will consider the changes when it finalizes its next budget.
The Universities Agreement recommends a review of bank lending practices “to ensure that HECS-HELP loans are not like other types of loans and are not treated in a way that unduly limits people’s ability to borrow”.
“Unless someone earns sufficient income, there is no obligation to repay (HELP debts) and as such they should be treated differently,” he says.
Clare told ABC Insiders that HECS-HELP needs to be “simpler and fairer”.
‘Let’s examine those [recommendations] and cost them and prioritize what we do first in the response we present in the coming months,” he said.
The government will also consider a recommendation to link indexation to the wage price index, rather than the consumer price index.
Clare said he would put forward proposals to the spending review committee, but said the work needed to reform the higher education system would take years.
“We can’t do all this right away,” he said.
“This is more than a budget, but we have to start now to lay the foundations for long-term reform.”
The review outlines targets including increasing the proportion of university-educated Australians aged 25 to 34 to 55 per cent by 2050, and the broader tertiary education completion rate to 80 per cent.
Other recommendations set out how to best support students while they study, including an ’employment broker’ to help students find part-time work and work experience, and greater availability of free preparation courses.
To achieve these goals, the government would need to double the number of Commonwealth-supported university students from 860,000 to 1.8 million by 2050.
The Education Minister said he hopes to do this by also helping more children from “poor families” “have a chance at university.”
Clare has ambitious plans to increase the number of bright students from the suburbs and outer regions going on to TAFE or university.
The Education Minister said he hopes to achieve this by helping more children from “poor families” have a chance at university.
This means that students whose families earn less than $54,000 a year will be guaranteed a place in a degree program if they meet admissions benchmarks.
The University Deal, chaired by former NSW chief scientist Mary O’Kane, argued that many more from disadvantaged backgrounds will have to graduate if the country is to have enough workers to fill the 6.3 million additional jobs it needs. will require a degree by 2050. .
Recommended to have with no limit on the number of places available for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and providing those students with additional funding to support their learning.
To reduce the risk of dropping out of school, the report also recommends creating more foundations to provide students with academic and study skills before starting a career.
HECS-HELP loans allow students to defer the cost of a college degree by borrowing from the federal government and then repaying the debt through the tax system.
Graduates must pay one percent of their income toward their debts once they start earning $51,550 a year.