Humanities and Comms Students Will Face 20 Years of Debt Under Uni Fee Hikes

The courses will more than double in price.

Back in June, the government announced that the cost of studying humanities at university is set to double, while "job-relevant" course fees will be decreased under an overhaul of tertiary education.

The government's aim is to funnel students into industries that'll drive job growth, including psychology, English, languages, teaching, agriculture, maths, science, health, environmental science and architecture.

While students undertaking those courses can expect to have their fees slashed, those enrolling in law or commerce will have their fees raised by 28 per cent.

Although, in August it was revealed that uni fees won't be doubled for social work and psychology courses. 

The Australian reported that the psychology and social work sectors were both concerned they'd lose out on a future workforce if the fees for courses increased.

Now, it has been announced that some uni degrees could take a whopping 20 years to pay off under the government's proposed HECS-HELP plan, with humanities and communications being impacted the most by the fee hikes.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, humanities and communications courses will more than double in price, with a full year of study costing $14,500. Fees for law and commerce will increase by 28 per cent to $14,500.

On the other hand, teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English, languages, maths and agriculture courses will decrease by 46 to 62 per cent, costing $3,950.

More than doubling the cost of humanities degrees is sad. They teach critical thinking, research skills, and broaden our worldview. It is easy to rip into them for not being ‘job specific’, but that ignores they are the scaffold to everything we know about our society.

— Daisy Turnbull (@mrsdzt) June 18, 2020

An independent Parliamentary Library modelling commissioned by the Greens found that males studying a social science degree would take around 12 years to pay off their HELP debt compared to around six years currently. For females doing the same degree, it'd take about 14 years, compared to seven years now.

Additionally, the federal government has revealed that students who fail more than half of their uni subjects in their first year will be cut from uni loans and subsidies under a major shake-up proposed for the higher education sector.

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