When the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) student loan program was introduced in 1989, fewer than 8 per cent of Australians had a university degree and graduates could expect to establish well-paid careers.
But 30 years on, as the number of people with degrees explodes, that's no longer a sure thing.
Graduates today often look like Launceston mum Georgina Routley, who retrained as a teacher after having kids.
Seven years into her new career, the 47-year-old still has $26,000 left to pay on her student debt.
"I've paid just over $6,000 [back], but I'm only $2,000 ahead of where I was," she said.
"It's frustrating to be working really, really hard as a part-time employee and working mum and not seeing much headway made on that debt — and I know that's the same story for a lot of teachers, particularly female teachers."
Women hold the majority of all student debt, Australian Tax Office (ATO) statistics show.
Teachers and nurses — both female-dominated professions — also carry the biggest repayment burden of any group, according to analysis of ATO data by Melbourne University's Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE).
Honorary senior fellow Mark Warburton said the student loan system — now known as the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) — was adding to gender inequity.
"Women have got less opportunity to improve their overall circumstances, to put extra money aside for superannuation, and so these things feed into the persistence of women's economic disadvantage," he said.
Ms Routley said that was "demoralising".
"This is just yet another way that women have to just fight a little bit harder … just to gain parity with men who might be in a similar situation," she said.
Why do women have a bigger debt burden?
The average male HELP debt is higher than the average female debt — around 12 per cent higher in 2021-22 — but most men earn higher incomes when they graduate.
"The great beneficiaries of higher education are men," Mr Warburton said.
"While men have slightly higher debts … they end up in higher-paying jobs and repay them much more quickly.
"Women … end up in lower-paying jobs, it takes them longer to repay their debts and they often end up with other obligations like having to look after children, which further extends their repayment periods and basically makes life a bit harder for them."
Another reason women repay more debt than men, Mr Warburton says, is because of structural changes made to tertiary education when the HECS system began.
Many traditionally feminised professions — like teaching and nursing — were absorbed into the university system and became more expensive to study.
Meanwhile, the more male-dominated trades stayed in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) system — and those courses often attract government subsidies.
Government data shows men aged 25-40 with VET qualifications are more likely to earn over $65,000 than women of the same age with a university degree.
"A lot of traditionally female occupations have been professionalised," Mr Warburton said.
"More [men] obtain post-school qualifications through the VET system, where there's generally much less reliance on fees that students pay back depending on their income."
'Poverty trap'
But those aren't the only reasons behind the debt gap.
In 2019, the Morrison government lowered the salary threshold at which compulsory HELP repayments kicked in.
Women made up 64 per cent of those newly required to repay their debts, according to Mr Warburton's analysis.
The salary threshold where compulsory payments kick in is currently $48,361 — and the more you earn, the more you repay.
That lands some people in trouble because repayments are calculated as a percentage of your total income — so even if your HELP repayments only increase by a small percentage, the repayment amount can increase significantly.
For example, a woman earning $55,000 per year would pay just $550 in HELP debt. But if she got an $8,000 pay rise, around 15 per cent of the extra income would be taken as increased repayments and she'd need to pay back $1,890 in a year.
That can be a double whammy because as a person's income grows, low-income supports like the Family Tax Benefit fall away just when tax rates and repayments like HELP and the Medicare Levy increase.
That hits take-home pay, with wage increases being reduced and, in some cases, eliminated altogether.
Mr Warburton said particular demographics, like those with a dependent partner, can end up losing money if their salary increases.
"It's really quite a poverty trap," he said.
'I'll be living in my car'
Students are often told not to worry about their HELP debts because they don't attract interest — but higher education debt can still have significant real-world impacts.
High levels of student debt can affect your ability to buy a house or car.
And because HELP debts are tied to inflation, right now they're soaring.
"I feel a little bit like it's two steps forward, one step back every year when the indexation happens," said Ms Routley, whose debt grew by $1,075 last year due to inflation.
Wollongong social worker Karen McKinnon feels the impact of her student debt every day and is worried about the future.
"I say to my family that I'll be living in my car as an old person when I retire, and they think it's a joke, but it's not," Ms McKinnon said.
Ms McKinnon, a 50-year-old single parent, has mostly worked part-time since the age of 24, when she had her first child.
She first went to university to get a bachelor of social science in 1991. While she has since completed additional study to make herself more employable, more than 30 years after her HELP account first opened, there is still $19,000 to repay.
Ms McKinnon has only recently returned to full-time work — a move which coincided with the lowering of the HELP repayment threshold in 2019.
That, plus medication, hospital visits and specialist appointments for her daughter Olivia, means the family is feeling the pinch.
"Those additional things reduce your week-to-week income and that impacts your day-to-day living. I'll never buy a house, I've been resigned to that for many years," Ms McKinnon said.
"I've got less than $100,000 in superannuation and I've only got about 15-20 years left in the workforce."
'It really devalues women's work'
Other women have also contacted the ABC with frustrations about HELP repayments, including some who said they wouldn't have gone to university at all if they knew they'd still be repaying loans so many years later.
Mr Warburton said the HELP program was "a very good way to fund higher education" that didn't have "anywhere near the problems" other countries had, but it was becoming less equitable.
He said the HELP repayment system should be changed to a marginal one like the tax system, and only deduct repayments from the amount earned over repayment thresholds.
Mr Warburton said that would lessen the impact on lower-income earners, many of whom were women and those with caring responsibilities.
"We need to start taking into account people's family circumstances," he said.
"In particular, we need to do something about women with children and people who have incomes less than $60,000."
The federal government has ordered a review of the tertiary education sector, which is due to report at the end of this year.
Something that will come under the microscope is the Morrison government's "job-ready graduates' program.
That policy hiked up the cost of various popular degrees such as arts and law — which are dominated by women — to coax students into sectors that needed more workers.
Ms McKinnon said the way the HELP system has been operating was not fair.
"I feel like it really devalues women's work," she said.
Ms Routley said she would like to see voluntary HELP repayments become tax deductible or further discounted, and for indexation to be frozen for women working part-time.
"If the government is serious about having women in the workplace … it needs to find ways to help women get jobs compatible with family life, but also doesn't result in them having a crippling debt that hangs over them for the next 20 or 30 years."
