The recent debate about student debt in England was triggered by this very interesting paper from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. I have used some of their analysis to think about how their situation differs from Australia’s, despite both having income contingent loans.

1) Total tuition costs. As I noted in my post last week, tuition charges are higher in England than in Australia, with most courses a flat £9,000 per year, or about $15,000 on current exchange rates. Australian annual student contributions this year range from $6,349 (arts, education, nursing) to $10,596 (law, medicine, commerce). The British pound has a low exchange rate at the moment; if we use $US purchasing power parity English courses are between 1.7 and 2.9 times more expensive than in Australia.

The high English tuition fees are partly because there are no tuition subsidies offsetting them in many courses, while all undergraduates at public universities in Australia receive tuition subsidies. But it is also because of their flat fee system, which means that students in low-cost fields are charged more than the total cost of their course.

While undergraduate courses are cheaper in Australia than England whichever way we compare them, in Australia we don’t have a good understanding of how HECS-HELP debt for undergraduate courses is interacting with FEE-HELP debt for postgraduate courses. But further study in full-fee courses is likely to be one reason why we are seeing strong growth in total HELP debts above $50,000. Read More »