Quarter of humanities students in Australia need over 25 years to repay loans, treasury reveals
Humanities students face more than 25 years to repay their loans, newly released Treasury modelling has revealed, as the impact of the Morrison government’s Job Ready Graduates program continues to reshape student debt trajectories.
One in four humanities students is projected to take over a quarter of a century to clear their student loans, according to the modelling prepared in May 2025 and released under freedom of information rules. The same analysis shows that nearly two-thirds of humanities and creative arts students are expected to accumulate debts exceeding $50,000, while the median repayment time for creative arts graduates has risen from 14 to 17 years as a direct result of the scheme.
How the Job Ready Graduates scheme drives up fees and extends repayment
Introduced in 2021 under former prime minister Scott Morrison, the Job Ready Graduates program was designed to steer students towards degrees deemed in high demand — science, nursing, education and IT — by slashing fees for those courses. To discourage subjects such as humanities, law and creative arts, the government dramatically increased their fees. A three-year journalism degree, for instance, jumped from roughly $20,000 to $45,000, while a mathematics degree became cheaper, according to research from the University of Melbourne. The result is a stark debt disparity: a three-year arts degree now costs $52,000, the Innovative Research Universities (IRU) has calculated.
The Treasury modelling, prepared before the current government cut student debt by 20% and raised the minimum repayment threshold to $67,000 from the 2025-26 income year, lays out the cumulative effect. Since the scheme began, the number of graduates leaving university with debts under $20,000 has doubled, but the number with debts over $50,000 has surged by 70%. Overall, the total student debt pile under the Job Ready Graduates program is $800 million larger than it would have been without the changes, yet Treasury estimates the government can expect only half of that extra debt to be repaid, as students in lower-earning fields face worse repayment prospects and are more likely to never settle their liabilities.
Education minister Jason Clare has repeatedly described the scheme as an “abject failure” in its core aim of deterring students from arts degrees. The University of Melbourne research supports that assessment, finding only 1.52% of applicants changed their field of study because of the fee changes. Researchers attributed this limited response to the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP), which allows students to defer fees, and to the fact that many continue to follow their interests despite the cost.
Despite the criticism, the Job Ready Graduates program has now been in place longer under the Albanese government than under the Coalition that introduced it — a point independent senator David Pocock has emphasised as he calls for urgent reform.
Deepening inequity and dwindling repayment
The consequences are not just financial for graduates. The Treasury modelling shows humanities students will be repaying their debts into their forties. Senator Pocock said the “unfair burden of higher student debt in lower-income professions will massively impact graduates’ lives, making it even harder to buy a home, start a family, travel”. He argued that the government’s actions so far — including capping indexation rates and legislating a 20% cut to student debt — address symptoms rather than the root cause. “If the Albanese government is serious about doing more on intergenerational equity, then reforming JRG has to be an urgent priority,” he said.
The IRU has highlighted that the scheme disproportionately affects low socioeconomic status students. Between 2020 and 2024, low SES student commencements declined by 9.8%, with a 19.7% drop in high-charging fields such as humanities, commerce and law — an outcome the IRU says is driving increased segregation across fields of education. Professor George Williams, vice-chancellor of Western Sydney University, said Australia is “going backwards” on equity, pricing some students out of degrees at the point of entry.
Meanwhile, the total outstanding HELP debt reached $81 billion in 2023-24, with an average debt of $27,650 across 2.9 million individuals. The Job Ready Graduates program is a major contributor: students in fields such as society and culture, social studies, law and accounting now contribute up to 93% of course costs.
Calls for reform mount as government process stalls
In February, the government passed legislation to establish the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC), which would advise the minister on university reform. But critics point out the body is not required to consider student contributions and makes no explicit mention of the Job Ready Graduates scheme. The government also rejected a Greens amendment that would have given ATEC a remit to review the program. The IRU has expressed disappointment that JRG reform has been excluded from ATEC’s responsibilities.
Professor Williams said the Treasury modelling “lays bare the deep unfairness of student fees” and identifies “deep systemic problems within the student fee structure, particularly the fact that we now have people carrying debt for such a large part of their lifetimes, and … they are people who often earn the lowest graduate salaries”. He warned that $50,000 arts degrees could remain in place until 2028 or beyond, adding, “We haven’t got any indication from the government yet [for reform], and clearly what we would like is a timetable and clarity about how long this will take to fix.”
