Thousands of Australian uni students will now receive $331 a week for practical placements. But not everyone’s happy

A range of degrees that require hundreds of hours of mandatory placements have been excluded from the federal government’s payments for university students. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

Thousands of university and Tafe students will receive financial support to complete mandatory placements for the first time from Tuesday, in a major win for stakeholders who have spent years pushing the commonwealth to address “placement poverty”.

But not all students are eligible for the payments, and others say the federal government hasn’t gone far enough to address a cost-of-living crisis facing young people.