The Department of Education and Training’s 2016-17 annual report announced the first public use of a project to link up the ATO’s HELP repayment data with the Department’s enrolment data:
In 2016–17 the department worked with both the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Government Actuary to create a database that links education courses with
income and occupation information. In 2018, the QILT website will publish graduate income data sourced from this database, which will inform students of the earning potential in their study area.
This will, of course, be very interesting, and could include income by university attended, as well as by study area. This has been done in the UK, although their QILT equivalent does not use it at this point.
But this data linking work is being done to better understand HELP debt and which factors affect repayment. It has potential uses well beyond student advice, uses that would fit a pattern of the government trying to reduce its risk of bad HELP debt.
The most obvious of these is to restrict access to courses with high rates of non-repayment. This was a feature of the VET Student Loans reform so that
loans are only being provided for courses that are closely aligned to the skills employers need in their workplace, thereby enhancing the opportunities for graduates to work, and to repay the money lent to them by taxpayers. [emphasis added]
Andrew Norton 