Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy
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Thank you to Senator Pocock, Dr Ryan and Ms Spender for bringing us together.
I also want to acknowledge your work keeping student debt, HELP reform and higher education fairness on the national agenda.
That advocacy matters to students, families and Australia’s future workforce.
On Job-ready Graduates, the evidence is clear.
JRG has failed.
It failed students. It failed universities. And it failed on its own terms.
The idea was blunt: make some degrees cheaper, make others much more expensive, and hope students follow the price tag.
But students don’t choose their future that way.
They choose what they are good at. What they care about. And where they can make a contribution.
JRG tried to use debt to push students around.
That was unfair, and it didn’t work.
Very few students changed what they wanted to study because of fee changes.
The policy didn’t shift student choice in any meaningful way.
It just made some choices much more expensive.
And students are paying the price.
Some are being charged up to $17,399 a year – more than $52,000 for a three-year degree.
That’s a huge debt before they have even started their career.
And it’s happening while everything else is going up.
Rent is up. Groceries are up. Electricity is up. Fuel is up.
That’s the double squeeze students are facing.
More to live. More to study. More debt at the end.
And yes, Australia’s HELP system matters here.
It means students are not paying these fees upfront. That’s important. It’s one of the strengths of our higher education system.
But HELP was never meant to be a blank cheque for unfair fees.
Just because a debt is income-contingent does not mean it is consequence-free.
The size of the debt still matters.
It matters when students are deciding whether university is for them.
It matters when they are deciding which course feels possible.
And it matters when they are already juggling rent, work, family responsibilities and the cost of getting by.
That’s where a two-tier system starts to emerge.
One group of students looks at a large debt and feels able to take it on.
Another group looks at that same debt and sees risk, pressure and uncertainty.
The policy says the door is open, but the debt can still make students hesitate before walking through it.
That’s not equal opportunity.
We should not make students choose between their talent and their tolerance for debt.
Australia needs graduates across all fields: teachers, nurses, engineers, tech workers, lawyers, economists, journalists, policy experts, business leaders, social scientists, creatives and community leaders.
JRG sent the wrong message.
It told some students their choice mattered less. It told them to pay much more. And it told universities to do more with less.
Students pay more. Universities receive less.
That’s not reform. It’s cost shifting.
If student debt is a problem worth spending billions to reduce, as the government is now doing, then JRG is a problem worth fixing.
Debt relief helps graduates today.
Replacing JRG stops tomorrow’s students being loaded up with unfair debt in the first place.
We need to fix JRG without doing it on the cheap.
We need to lower student fees but fund them properly.
Students need a fairer deal.
Universities need the resources to teach them properly.
Australia needs more people going to university, not fewer.
It’s time for JRG to go.
Replace it with something fairer. Fund it properly. Back students. Back universities.
Universities Australia comes to this conversation ready to work with you all – parliamentarians, students and colleagues – on what a fairer model looks like.
One that lowers debt, protects quality and gives more Australians the chance to succeed at university.
I look forward to hearing the ideas around the table.
