New data from the consumer price index (CPI) has confirmed the brutal truth everyone who went to uni in the last 30 years has been trying to ignore: student debts are going to rise again this year. This continued raising of debts has politicians warning that the HECS debt crisis is “a betrayal to students”.
The CPI — which measures the changes in costs to consumer goods — revealed that though inflation in Australia has slowed, it has not slowed by enough to curb this dreadful cost of living crisis.
And because of the hellish nightmare world we live in, that affects EVERYTHING we buy, from groceries to degrees, to houses — not that anyone under 50 is buying those anyway.
And thanks to projections from the Greens, we now know exactly how much this means the indexation on HECS debt will rise on June 1.
If you love bad news and being broke, you’re gonna love this!
How much will HECS rise in 2024?
Student debts will rise by 4.8% this June, which will add an estimated total of $3.3 billion to the total student debt in Australia.
Earlier in April, student debt indexation was predicted to rise by between 4.2% and 4.8%. Lucky us, the number it rose by was the maximum of what was predicted!
Hooray for big numbers, and so long to the chances of ever paying off this debt in my lifetime! Serves me right for trying to get an education I guess???
How much will your total debt raise increase?
The average student debt in Australia is $26,494. On June 1, someone with this amount of student debt will log into their MyGov account and find they will owe the government an additional $1,272 due to the 4.8% indexation.
Someone who owes approximately $50K in student debt will have their total amount raised by another $2.4K. This makes up approximately 135K Australians, according to data from the Parliamentary Library.
What are politicians saying about it?
Greens deputy leader and spokesperson for tertiary education, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, has called out the Federal Government for raising the student debt yet again and giving millions of Australians no relief in this cost of living crisis.
“Student debt is already locking people out of the housing market, crushing dreams of further study and stopping people from starting a family,” said Faruqi in a statement.
“Anything less than scrapping indexation in the May budget is a betrayal to students. It is obscene that Labor is making billions off students while handing big subsidies to the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry.”
Faruqi has called for a wiping of the student debt, and tertiary education to be free for students today as it was for most of the members of Australian Parliament.
When asked if she and the Greens support the Government’s if it decided to ease indexation based on the CPI, the senator stated that she wold support anything that eased the burden on students.
“It’s really like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” Faruqi joked.
“It will make really no difference at all. What we really need to do is scarp indexation entirely.”
The Labor Government will announce its budget on May 14, where it will announce if there will be any relief for the millions of struggling Aussies with student debt.
They have not confirmed if they will respond to the calls for change, but Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has said Labor will respond to the Universities Accords calls to make HECS “simpler and fairer”.
