ºÚÁÏÀÏ˾»ú Chief Executive Officer Luke Sheehy
There aren’t many issues in higher education where the entire sector lines up, but reforming the Job-ready Graduates Package is one of them. Vice-chancellors, students, staff, business leaders, parliamentarians and even the education minister.
Across the board, there is a clear view that Job-ready Graduates is not working and needs to go. This is now playing out in the national debate, with a Senate inquiry examining what comes next. But the real question is no longer whether the policy should change – it’s why it hasn’t already.
The evidence is in and has been for some time. The Morrison government introduced Job-ready Graduates at the height of the pandemic, built on the assumption that changing the price of a degree would change the choices students make. It hasn’t worked.
What it has done is push up costs for students, increase graduate debt and strip around $4 billion from the university system since 2021. Today, we have roughly $1 billion less each year to fund student places under this system. That’s a significant reduction in opportunity at a time when Australia needs more people, not fewer, going to university.
Students are paying more – in some cases more than $50,000 for a three-year degree – and taking on higher levels of debt as a result. For some, that is shaping who goes to university and who misses out.
What’s more, the policy hasn’t delivered on its core objective. Job-ready Graduates has failed to shift demand in any meaningful way while disproportionately impacting lower SES students.
To its credit, the Albanese government has acknowledged that the policy is not working as intended – going as far as campaigning to replace Job-ready Graduates if elected in 2022. But acknowledging a failure is not the same as fixing it and Labor, now in its second term of government, is yet to act. That is not good enough.
Now we have legislation before the Parliament that seeks to reduce student fees. This is a step in the right direction, and making university more affordable is an objective we strongly support. But it only works if the system itself remains sustainable.
This is where the current proposal falls short. The legislation, as drafted, cuts student fees on one hand and quietly cuts funding on the other. Without additional Commonwealth investment, it strips a further $1.3 billion from the system each year.
That’s not reform – it’s cost-shifting. And when government steps back, students pick up the bill – not always through fees, but through fewer services, less support and a diminished university experience. Lower fees mean very little if the system delivering that education is being hollowed out.
That is the reality this bill creates, and it’s why the sector is united in its message: fix Job-ready Graduates but fix it properly. Reduce costs for students and properly fund the system that supports them. You cannot do one without the other.
Because this doesn’t stop at fees or funding lines in a budget – it goes to the strength and sustainability of the entire system. That matters because this is bigger than one policy.
Australia is aiming for 80 per cent tertiary attainment by 2050. We will not get there if cost becomes a greater barrier to university, if quality is eroded or if we weaken the system we rely on to deliver it.
Universities educate Australia’s future workforce, drive research and innovation and anchor their communities. They are not a nice to have – they are a need to have. The inquiry underway is an opportunity to move beyond acknowledging the problem and actually fix it.
But that will take political courage. One government created this problem. The other now has the responsibility to fix it. The longer we delay, the more students will pay the price – one way or another.
