The Australian Government has flagged changes to the HECS and placement pay as the government received recommendations for a major review of the university sector.
These HECS recommendations include additional financial support for low-income students and in particular a new method of calculating and indexing HECS repayments as more than 250,000 people have signed a petition in the past month demanding changes to the way university students are asked to repay tuition fees under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS).
The petition can be found on Change.org **Link Below The indexation system makes over a million Australians’ HECS debt grow faster than being repaid.
The reason behind growing HECS debts is the CPI Increase or Consumer Price Index that is added annually in comparison to the lower Wage Price Index which allows for a smaller increase. Reading that twice insinuates that the CPI increase on HECS debt is higher than the annual Wage Price Index.
Solid traction is growing to review the HECS system as the petition comes alongside an article on ABC News **Link below. Where the claim is made to rethink indexation on HECS students and instead increase taxes on oil and gas companies to ease the financial burden on Australian students who are contributing their higher education back into Australian society.
To solidify the issue yet again, 9 News did an expose this month discussing the increase and impacts the HECS systems have on our tertiary-educated workers who engaged in the HELP systems, obtaining a 7.1% increase in 2023.
These increasing costs raise questions about the cost of living crisis, its impact on future generations, and what the government can do to ease HECS/HELP financial pressure.
Resources**
https://www.abc.net.au/
https://www.change.org/
https://www.9news.com.au/