Once considered a good 'social policy', students say HECS loans are a burden on an entire generation

When these eleven university students finally don their graduation gowns, they will collectively owe more than $750,000 in tertiary loans.From neuroscience to medicine, psychology and law, they are daunted by the HECS debts they're racking up and fear they will never be able to pay them off.The nation's three million HECS loans are set to soar by 4.7 per cent on June 1 in the second highest ever indexation under Labor.

As president of the University of Queensland Union, he is advocating for a better deal, insisting many students did not understand how HECS was calculated when they signed up."It is a huge amount of debt, it is very easy at the moment to try and trivialise it and push it away as a 'later me' problem," he says."The government needs to take a long hard look at the rate it is increasing because the debt is just going up and up faster than students can pay it off.

It's a sentiment echoed by student nurse and midwife Anastacia Prendegast, who's greatest concern is being able to afford to live while on placement in a major teaching hospital.She has to "commit to a thousand hours of unpaid placement" and says it will be years before she can start paying back her HECS."I have anxiety about the rate of indexing.

"I think the politics of fixing this problem is as easy as it gets — governments should tax things they want less of, and subsidise things they want more of, like higher education."He argues a full 10 per cent tax on oil, gas, and coal exports — without loopholes — would be enough to pay off the entire HECS debt within three years.In a statement to the ABC, federal Education Minister Jason Clare said he was considering the 47 recommendations made by the University Accord.

Hecs Hecs Debt Higher Education Contribution Scheme Labor Government Higher Education University Uni Students Student Debt University Students Education Loan Repayments Hecs Indexation Queensland Loan Repayment Debt Youth Debt Inflation Indexation Growing HECS

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