Rising costs
At first, HECS-HELP fees increased steadily but not alarmingly. That changed in 2020 with the introduction of the Job-ready Graduates Package, a sweeping reform that more than doubled fees for many humanities subjects, while the cost for STEM, nursing, education and health courses were reduced.
“Previously, the system broadly aligned costs with expected earnings: degrees that typically led to high-income careers, such as medicine, dentistry and law, carried higher student contributions, while lower-paying fields were more affordable,” says Bruce Chapman.
“Under the new structure, humanities students, who are statistically among the lowest-paid graduates and disproportionately female, now face some of the highest…