FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 2025
23rd July 2025 – The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) and the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Postgraduate Association (NATSIPA) welcome the Federal Government’s legislation which would see debt relief of 20% for existing Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) debts.
CAPA and NATSIPA commend the Federal Labor Government for enacting our recommendation to increase the minimum repayment threshold to the median wage, which will assist young graduates as they enter the job market and build their careers.
CAPA and NATSIPA deeply support the Federal Government’s goal to increase cost-of-living support for Australians. However, we believe that waiving debt does not increase opportunities for future Australians to attend quality universities for postgraduate education. We believe the best way to decrease the cost-of-living burden on current and future students, to pay down their HELP debt, is secure jobs, strong wages and affordable education.
Postgraduate education is becoming critical for domestic Australians to remain competitive in the labour market – and pay down their HELP debts. The 2023 Graduate Outcomes Survey demonstrates that 90.3% of recent domestic postgraduate coursework graduates are in full-time employment, with a median salary of $97,000, compared with just 79% of domestic undergraduate graduates with a median salary of $71,000. Yet paradoxically, the number of domestic postgraduate Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs) for domestic Australians does not meet demand: According to Universities Australia, in 2022, there were 48,598 Domestic Australians in Commonwealth supported postgraduate courses compared with 50,774 full-fee-paying postgraduate coursework places – further inflating their HELP debts.
This has been further exacerbated by the Coalition’s ‘Student Learning Entitlements’, which limits the number of CSP units one can undertake.
Concerningly, there is little regulation on the cost of postgraduate coursework degrees for domestic students. For example, studying an Allied Health postgraduate degree at The University of Melbourne in speech pathology, an industry where there are national job shortages, costs ~$84,000 (full-fee) in 2026, alongside hundreds of hours of unpaid placements.
“The Australian Government appears focused on the education of just some Australians. We should be breaking down barriers for all Australians to access postgraduate education,” said CAPA National President, Jesse Gardner-Russell.
“If you cannot get a CSP, the value of a full-fee paying postgraduate degree, which could be anywhere from ~$50,000 to $250,000+, doesn’t always add up. This is restricting postgraduate education, which is more professionally focused, to Australians from more privileged backgrounds.”
“It’s no surprise that according to the Government, just ~2.5% of people from regional Australia, like myself, have a postgraduate degree. Just to get to University I worked a full-time job and an additional part-time job during a gap year to save up to move from regional Victoria.”
Under the current system, courses are approved for CSPs if it is the minimum legal accreditation to become a practitioner (e.g. accounting or dentistry), or it is the shortest pathway to enter a profession. Postgraduate degrees are, in most cases, professionally oriented; more so than undergraduate degrees, yet domestic undergraduate students can almost universally access CSPs.
This situation is exacerbated for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, where the key funding allocation supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student support centres and their staff, the Indigenous Student Assistance Grants (ISAG)/Indigenous Student Success Program (ISSP) has not kept up with demand. Moreover this program omits postgraduate students to a large degree. Despite increases to ISSP funding by Labor, this has not made up for the losses to this program under the former Coalition governments.
NATSIPA National President, Sharlene Leroy-Dyer states, “In 2024 the government announced that it is transitioning to a needs-based funding model (NBF) for higher education, which will replace the existing Indigenous Student Success Program (ISSP). Whilst the government states that this new model aims to provide a more flexible and targeted approach to supporting students from under-represented backgrounds, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, we believe this would have a detrimental effect on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student support and could see the end of the specialised Indigenous student support centres on campus. We call on the government to reverse this decision and leave ISSP as a standalone program to ensure this vital support is continued, so we can ‘Close the Gap’ on our educational outcomes”.
CAPA and NATSIPA call for the Government to reform CSP allocation: all postgraduate coursework degrees should attract CSP places, except for those where there is little or no professional or community benefit. Furthermore, to break down barriers to postgraduate studies for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, CAPA and NATSIPA call for ISSP funding to be dramatically increased to meet demands required.
ENDS
| Jesse Gardner-Russell National President Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations Inc. Level 1, 120 Clarendon St, Southbank, Victoria 3006 President@capa.edu.au 0431288846 | Associate Professor Sharlene Leroy-Dyer National President National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Postgraduate Association Inc. Level 1, 120 Clarendon St, Southbank, Victoria 3006 President@natsipa.edu.au |
