IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ozl/journl/v28y2025i2p155-189.html

Reforming HECS-HELP: Towards equity with repayment longevity and subsidies

Author

Listed:
  • Bruce Chapman

    (The Australian National University)

  • Tim Higgins

    (The Australian National University)

  • Gaurav Khemka

    (The Australian National University)

Abstract

One of the Commonwealth government’s most significant areas of budgetary management relates to university funding via the HECS-HELP system. This paper is motivated by the significant changes introduced by the Jobs Ready Graduate Package in 2021 and illustrates how alternative HECS-HELP prices which are more equitable in a variety of ways (such as those promoted by the 2024 University Accord Review), can be selected based on expected graduates’ lifetime incomes. We illustrate the consequences of alternative prices to two issues of public importance, namely, expected time to repay HECS-HELP debts and government subsidies both with respect to field of study. To do so we develop a stochastic microsimulation model using publicly available data and estimate, by field of study, both average repayment durations and subsidies that arise due to concessional interest rates and non-repayment. We show that alternative prices regimes can result in more equitable bases in both repayment duration and repayment subsidies.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce Chapman & Tim Higgins & Gaurav Khemka, 2025. "Reforming HECS-HELP: Towards equity with repayment longevity and subsidies," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 28(2), pages 155-189.
    • Handle: RePEc:ozl:journl:v:28:y:2025:i:2:p:155-189
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ajle.org/index.php/ajle_home/article/view/316/233
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques
    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ozl:journl:v:28:y:2025:i:2:p:155-189. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sandie Rawnsley (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/becurau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.