Alice Grundy
Research Manager

The Greens’ Higher Education Support Amendment (Reverse Job-Ready Graduates Fee Hikes and End 50k Arts Degrees) Bill is a proposed remedy to the Morrison government’s massive university fee increases. 

Job-Ready Graduates is a scheme that was designed to push students out of Arts degrees and into studying other subjects such as Maths or Agriculture by significantly raising the price of some degrees. 

However, as Professor George Williams, Vice Chancellor of Western Sydney University said in his recent Vantage Point essay: 

“The policy failed in its own terms and also failed the nation as a whole. While the plan was, for example, to use high prices for arts degrees and low prices for agriculture degrees to change student choices, it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how students choose what to study. A potential history student did not seek a career in farming, nor did a student passionate about philosophy shift to mathematics. Instead, it made the entire university system more socially regressive and inequitable.”

One study found that fewer than one in fifty students changed degrees because of the policy. 

Australia Institute polling research has shown Australians think degrees cost too much: three in four Australians think university degrees should cost $10,000 or less, yet Arts degrees now cost nearly $17,000 per year.

Despite over one term in office, the Labor Government is yet to act on this inequitable system.