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HELP debt tops
$ 26 billion
unpaid university debt is costing the government billions of dollars and will continue to increase, according to a research group.
The amount of debt unlikely to be repaid is accumulating yearly as more students take out loans under the HELP student loan scheme, said Connor King, the executive director of Innovative Research Universities.
“ The total amount is always growing but that’ s the nature of the system,” he said. As of June last year, the HELP debt was $ 26.3 billion, according to data from the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education.
In 2011-12, former students made $ 1.438 billion in compulsory repayments and $ 260 million in voluntary repayments.
During the same period, $ 4.013 billion was reported as new HELP debt, according to DIISRTE.
But King said that the rise in outstanding debts was expected, and“ nothing we need to worry about”.
He attributed the rise to expansions in the number of students applying for study.
The Gratten Institute estimated that $ 6.2 billion of the $ 26.3 billion would never be repaid.
Under the repayment scheme, individuals are only required to repay their loans once their annual income reaches $ 49,095.
HECS repayments can be avoided by leaving Australia to work in another country, but further payments are due upon return.
“ The debt is still there, unless you are planning to leave Australia for life,” King said.
Interest is not charged on higher education loans but they are indexed against inflation.
According to DIISRTE, the average amount outstanding for people with a HELP debt is $ 15,200.
King quashed the idea of an increase in student charges as a possible solution to reducing the debt. He said it would just increase the loans students take out and increase both individual debt and the total outstanding.
A spokesperson for the Tertiary Education Minister said the HELP debt was expected to increase as more students took advantage of the government’ s uncapping of Commonwealth-supported places at public universities. n
ATAR bonus system
‘ out of control’
south Australia’ s use of bonus points, used to boost a student’ s Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank, is“ out of control”, according to the University of Adelaide’ s vice-chancellor, professor Warren Bebbington.
“ The aim of bonus points is usually to make adjustments that assist students from disadvantaged backgrounds to compete on a level playing field, or else to encourage students to enrol in neglected but important subjects,” Bebbington said.“ In South Australia, they are being used so widely and freely, it is difficult to see what objective is achieved.
“ In other states, bonus points are
Warren Bebbington set centrally by the admissions centre and uniformly applied to all institutions. In South Australia, a student might get different bonus points from each university for exactly the same achievement,” he said.
Bebbington, who is board chair of the South Australian Tertiary Admissions Centre, said students and their parents would benefit if university entry scores and admission criteria were more transparent. South Australia is not as accountable as other states, where tertiary admission centres publish the“ clearly in” ATAR and the admission percentage below that score, as well as the mean ATAR. SATAC is prevented from publishing such information.
Bebbington said the lack of transparency, such as publishing course cut-off scores that include bonus points, leading students to believe their ATAR is inadequate, would negatively influence students’ decisions about what and where to study.
“ It’ s not helpful to someone who wants to apply for a course to see a published cut-off score that’ s 40 points higher than it really is,” he said.“ They would change their preference to something else, and potentially miss out on their program of choice because they didn’ t have the right information.
“ It’ s now up to us – the university sector in South Australia and SATAC, with government support – to make sure the system works better for the benefit of students and their families.” n
12 | March 2013