pOLicy & refOrm
campusreview.com.au
Universities Australia chief executive
Belinda Robinson calls the Grattan paper a
“welcome contribution to a much-needed
public discussion on how a great student
loan program can be made fairer and more
financially sustainable”.
Robinson argues adjustment to HELP
is necessary, as the current system allows
“some very well-off people to avoid paying
their debt”. She encourages government
to explore debt recovery options that
don’t undermine HELP’s “fundamental
policy intent”.
Meanwhile, the National Tertiary Education
Union is voicing its opposition to any lowering
of the threshold. NTEU national president
Jeannie Rea says Grattan “seems to be
helping the government save some money
at the cost of students”. Rea rejects the
report’s modelling showing that lowering
the threshold may help graduates in the long
run, as they’d pay off their debt faster. Instead,
she proposes lowering university fees, so
graduates have less debt to begin with.
“The intention of the income-contingent
HELP loan scheme is for graduates to
repay when their financial position is better
established, and then further contribute
over their working life paying income taxes,”
Rea says. “The best way to improve the
financial viability of the HELP scheme is
to lower the average level of student debt
by lowering university fees.”
In contrast, Conor King, executive director
of Innovative Research Universities – a
network representing Murdoch, La Trobe,
James Cook, Charles Darwin, Griffith, and
Flinders universities – says he wouldn’t
oppose lowering the HELP threshold “if it
was part of a broader package to ensure
universities have the money they need, to
provide the education students need”.
“The [Grattan] data is more interesting
than the conclusions,” King tells Campus
Review. “The whole question of where the
threshold sits is really just to get the balance
right between people repaying enough of
the amount the government lends them.
“[The Grattan report] does show that
if you lower [the threshold] a little bit,
you start to bring in a lot more people
who are paying back a lot more quickly,
which would lead more people to finish
up the debt and get rid of it within their
first 5–10 years [after] graduation. There
are certainly some advantages from that,
but you do need to look at the impact on
[those] who would be paying back. It does
tend to target perhaps women a little bit
more, who might have part-time work.”
King also argues that the report’s data
fails to separate out those paying off
debts relating to VET courses. With many
holders of such qualifications earning less
than university graduates, and with a huge
expansion of the VET sector in recent years,
King says their inclusion in the data “makes
some of the figures look worse than they
really are”. n
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