Job-Ready Graduates Package Explainer

Download: Job-Ready Graduates Package Explainer

This explainer is a brief policy explainer of what we know from the National Press Club address 19 June 2020 with Minister Dan Tehan regarding Job-ready Graduates. The biggest change that most the sector is most concerned about is the remodelling of how government subsidies will be provided per discipline band as seen below. We see that certain areas of study deemed ‘areas of national interest’ are having their student contribution lowered and not compensated by an increase in government loan. However, students studying the humanities will experience a substantial increase (+113%) to their student loans due to the withdrawl of government subsidies from their units.

Discipline Bands:	Fee change
Agriculture and Maths	62% decrease
Teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English and languages	42% decrease
Science, health, architecture, environmental science, IT and engineering	20% decrease
Medicine, dental, veterinary science	No change
Law and Commerce	28% Increase
Humanities	113% Increase

Key points:

• The changes in fees will be based per unit studied and not entire courses.
• This will only affect students future domestic students (starting 2021) that are awarded a Commonwealth Supported Place (CSP). There will be no direct impact from this policy change to international students
• It will not affect current students that finish before 2024
• If a student enrols in a subject that has a lower rate under the new system, this lower rate will apply, no matter whether the student commenced before or after 1 January 2021.

The long-term ramifications are still unknown i.e. university response to the reform: increasing the tuition fees of degrees, changes to course availability, etc. However, what we know is there will be significant disadvantage and inequality towards humanities students that will have to pay back student loans that will increase by up to +113%.