University course fees may be changed and students given more support in paying their Hecs and Help debts, as part of a proposed massive overhaul of the tertiary education system being considered by the education minister, Jason Clare.
The changes may include paying some students to complete work experience as the government plans for the “workforce of the future”.
The final Australian University Accord report was released on Sunday and lays out plans to ensure at least 80% of Australia’s workforce receives higher qualifications, either through vocational training and Tafe or university by 2050.
It recommended more support for students from lower socioeconomic and underrepresented backgrounds to reach university or vocational training and to complete it.
While the official government response to the report’s 47 recommendations is still under consideration, Clare gave early support to changing fee structures and financial arrangements for students who need additional support.
Recommendations to change how students pay back deferred university fees, by overhauling the Hecs and Help systems, are top of the agenda, with Clare implying changes could be made as early as the May budget.
The changes could include a tiered repayment structure, where people on lower incomes pay back less.
“For example, if we were to go down this path, it says that someone on an income of $75,000 a year would pay every year about $1,000 less,” Clare told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
“That is something that could provide people with an immediate cost-of-living benefit once they finish uni and are in the workforce.”
Indexation, where the interest on university deferred loans increases according to inflation, is also under a microscope, with a recommendation to link it to the wage price index rather than the consumer price index.
“We will look at those [recommendations] and cost those and prioritise what we do first in the response we put out in the next few months,” Clare said.
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The main priority, according to Clare, was establishing fairer conditions to ensure students could complete their degree no matter their financial background.
“I spent a fair amount of time while I was at university cooking cheese toast at Sizzler rather than working in the area I was studying, which was a law degree,” Clare said.
“That’s an area where can you help people with the cost of living. On paid practice, it makes the point, if you are a nursing student you are spending 800 hours working in a hospital where are you not paid; if you are a teaching student, 300 hours in the classroom where you are not paid.
“Students often have to move to do the paid practice, often have to give up a part-time job. I’ve spoken to nursing students and teaching students who … drop out because they can’t afford the practice, or they end up sleeping in a car because they can’t afford the bills.”
The report recommends increasing the number of 25-to-34-year-olds with a university degree from 45% to 55%, while also increasing vocational qualifications to 40%.
“We’ve got to do it otherwise we have an economy with the handbrake on,” Clare said. “We have to get rid of that invisible barrier that stops a lot of young people from poor families from the regions and from the outer suburbs of our big cities from getting a crack at university.”
Clare also raised the prospect of scrapping the Morrison-era changes to university fee structures, which made humanities and arts degrees more expensive but discounted degrees in areas such as nursing and teaching as recommended in the report.
The review recommends a student contribution system based on potential lifetime earnings.
The accord recommendations were welcomed by Universities Australia who want the government to fast-track establishing an implementation advisory committee to prioritise the reform rollout.
The Greens want the government to immediately scrap the Morrison era university funding hikes and implement fairer fee measures as one of its first actions.
