Yasmin Jenkins Gunn knew the cost of arts degrees had just doubled to $43,500 when she enrolled to study in 2021.
But the Melbourne-based gender studies student followed her passions anyway – they weren’t going to change based upon government policy.
“It frustrated me, but it didn’t dissuade me,” she said.
Two years later, her total debt is already more than $20,000 – the cost of an entire arts degree just a few years ago. She has only managed to study part-time, working in hospitality to cover high living costs.
Her debt increased by $1,000 alone in the latest financial year on top of annual fees with recent indexation.
“It keeps going up and up; I’m afraid to even look,” she said.
Labor has confirmed it plans to scrap reforms introduced by the former government which increased the student contribution of some degrees. But students will have to wait until at least 2024 to see how their contributions will change.
A panel informing the federal government’s university accord process wrote in its interim report last week that continuing the scheme in its current format risked “causing long-term and entrenched damage to Australian higher education”.
The jobs-ready graduates package was implemented in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic to incentivise students to study certain degrees, including science and engineering.
It reduced the overall government contribution to degrees from 58% to 52% and increased fees for some courses, including humanities, to fund fee cuts in other courses and 39,000 extra university places.
A coalition of leading tertiary voices, including the Australian National University, the NTEU and Universities Australia, lodged submissions to the universities accord review earlier this year arguing the reforms hadn’t worked and more students were studying humanities than before the changes came into effect.
The education minister, Jason Clare, has taken the immediate action of scrapping the portion of the scheme which excluded students from commonwealth assistance if they failed half their subjects, as per the interim report’s recommendation.
But the panel last week delayed firm recommendations on funding changes until a final report is handed down in December.
Clare said the interim report made it “pretty clear” the job-ready graduates scheme needed to be redesigned, but what form that took remained up for discussion.
“Between now and the final report the accord team will work on how to fix this and what other changes might need to be made,” he said.
“I genuinely want people to have a conversation about the merits of the ideas in the interim report. Pull them apart. Critique them and improve on them. Or reject them and suggest others.”
Appearing at the National Press Club earlier this month, Clare fell short of confirming fee hikes for humanities students would be reversed, adding it was “one part of a bigger piece of work” to set up Hecs and Help for the future.
Clare said he “shouldn’t preempt” getting rid of differentiated student contributions altogether, noting Bruce Chapman, the initial architect of the system, had been tasked by the accord panel to examine the future integrity of the fee system.
Various ideas have been raised, including modifying domestic fees to ensure student debts are paid off at roughly the same time, depending on considerations like future income.
Catriona Jackson, the CEO of Universities Australia, said the body “fully support[s]” the government’s intention to explore new, fairer funding models.
“At its core, [the] job-ready graduates [scheme] cut the average level of government funding for student places while shifting the additional costs on to students and universities,” she said. “We’d like to see a revised approach as soon as possible.”
Mehreen Faruqi, the Greens spokesperson for higher education, said the job-ready graduates scheme was “universally despised” by the sector and the accord process had confirmed it was a “policy disaster”.
NTEU modelling found some humanities and business courses could cost more than $100,000 and take upwards of 44 years to repay as a result of the scheme.
“[Labor] should have dumped the scheme’s fee hikes and funding cuts the minute they came to office,” Faruqi said.
“A generation of students, especially female students, are being saddled with exorbitant debts.”
Xavier Dupé, an education officer for the National Union of Students, said the job-ready graduates package had further privatised the cost of education and entrenched inequity.
“It’s made it so that students, collectively, pay more for their education than the government does,” he said.
For Jenkins Gunn, it’s never been a tougher time to be an arts student.
“The changes should be reversed but more needs to be done than that,” she said. “They could have [frozen] indexation, they could abolish student debt.
“It’s such a brutal time to be a student right now, we’re grappling with cost of living, rent hikes, I don’t know about career prospects. There are so many barriers.”
