Students' Soring Debts

One in four humanities students in Australia to take more than 25 years to pay off student loans, Treasury finds.

One in four humanities students will take more than 25 years to fully repay their student loans because of Morrison government changes to university fees, newly public Treasury modelling reveals.

The job-ready graduates program, introduced in 2021 under the former prime minister Scott Morrison, will also leave almost two-thirds of humanities and creative arts students saddled with debts exceeding $50,000.

Treasury also found median repayment times for creative arts graduates increasing from 14 to 17 years because of the scheme – which critics point out has been in place longer under Labor than under the last Coalition government.

The scheme was introduced to incentivise students to take degrees such as science, nursing, education and IT, and disincentivise humanities, law and creative arts degrees by significantly increasing fees.

The university sector has said the scheme has not changed students’ choices.

The modelling, released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information rules, was prepared in May 2025. It shows that the number of graduates leaving university with debts under $20,000 has doubled, the number of students with debts over $50,000 has increased by 70%, and humanities students are set to pay off their debts into their 40s.

Help debt payback times have significantly increased for arts students

Showing the estimated time taken to repay Help debt by field of study under the job-ready graduates (JRG) scheme and with pre-JRG fees

Median

Pre-JRG

JRG

75th percentile

25th percentile

5

10

15

20

25

years

Creative arts

Humanities

Law

A quarter of arts students’ repayments now longer than 25 years

Commerce

Architecture

Other health

Science

Agriculture

Education

IT

Nursing

Engineering

Medical

Guardian graphic. Source: Treasury modelling released under FOI

- Author: Krishani Dhanji, The Guardian

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