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And in case you missed it, we dropped

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on the hunt for movement that makes

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you feel good, head to move.mamma mia.com.au

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and use the code MOV10 to get

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$10 off a yearly subscription. Is

0:51

any university degree still worth it? That's

0:54

the question we're asking today, with the government

0:56

announcing a reduction in the level of indexation

0:58

that in recent years has seen some hex

1:01

debts balloon out. Many young Aussies

1:03

are wondering if getting a university degree is

1:05

still really worth the money. So

1:07

today we're looking into just what students

1:09

are facing here and whether investing in

1:11

tertiary education is a long game payoff

1:13

or not. But first, here's the latest

1:16

from the Quickie Newsroom for Thursday, May 9. The

1:19

man remains on the run after a

1:21

domestic violence incident outside a Sydney gym.

1:24

Police say the 39-year-old victim was stabbed

1:26

in the neck, head and back in

1:28

the car park of the gym at

1:30

Alexandria yesterday afternoon. The man allegedly having

1:32

laid in wait for her. Police allege

1:34

the 40-year-old suspect had been in a

1:36

short relationship with the woman just a

1:38

matter of weeks and has a history

1:40

of domestic violence. The woman was

1:42

treated by paramedics at the scene and remains

1:44

in hospital in a serious but stable condition.

1:47

Police continue to hunt the man who reportedly

1:49

fled the scene in a

1:51

grey 2006 Ford Focus hatchback

1:53

with the registration AYQ14W. A

1:57

University of Sydney study has revealed how the...

2:00

impact of child abuse in Australia

2:02

causes nearly half of common mental

2:04

health conditions. The study shows

2:06

that childhood maltreatment accounted for 41% of suicide

2:08

attempts, 35% of

2:12

cases of self-harm and 21%

2:14

of depression. The mental health

2:16

conditions researched in the study

2:18

included anxiety, depression, harmful drug

2:20

and alcohol use, self-harm and

2:22

suicide. Childhood maltreatment

2:24

is classified as physical, sexual and

2:26

emotional abuse or neglect prior to

2:28

the age of 18. The study

2:30

found emotional abuse has a profound

2:32

impact in many different areas of a

2:35

child's life. The study concluded that if

2:37

childhood maltreatment was eradicated in Australia,

2:39

more than 1.8 million

2:42

cases of depression, anxiety and substance

2:44

abuse disorders could be prevented. If

2:47

this story has raised some issues for you, please reach

2:49

out to the team at Lifeline. They are standing by

2:51

on 13 11 14. The

2:54

US has paused a shipment of powerful

2:56

bombs to Israel as the battle continues

2:58

around the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

3:00

The United States has made it clear

3:02

they are not in support of Israel

3:04

invading Rafah, where more than 1 million

3:06

Palestinians have fled after Israel bombarded the

3:09

north of the enclave in response to

3:11

the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas.

3:14

Israel claims thousands of Hamas fighters are

3:16

holed up in the city, but many

3:18

western nations including the US have warned

3:21

a full-scale attack on the city of

3:23

Rafah would be humanitarian catastrophe. Washington

3:25

is Israel's closest ally and main

3:27

weapons supplier, but they've paused the

3:30

latest shipment in an apparent response

3:32

to the expected Rafah offensive. The

3:34

White House and Pentagon have declined

3:36

to comment. Taylor Swift's

3:38

boyfriend is trying out a new career

3:40

direction, taking on his first major

3:42

acting role. Travis Kelsey will star

3:44

opposite Nisi Nash-Bets, Courtney B Vance

3:46

and British star Leslie Manville in

3:49

the new horror drama Grotesquerie

3:51

due out later this year. This step

3:53

into acting comes after the recent Super

3:56

Bowl winner hosted US sketch comedy show

3:58

Saturday Night Live. He's previously starred

4:00

in his own reality TV show called Captain

4:02

Kelsey. He was also recently announced as the

4:04

host of the quiz show Are You Smarter

4:07

Than a Celebrity? The horror drama Kelsey is

4:09

starring in is being made by Ryan Murphy

4:11

who's behind other huge shows like American

4:13

Horror Story, Glee and Nip Tuck. That's

4:16

your latest news headlines, up next we find

4:19

out if a university degree is worth the

4:21

money now that Hex debts are weighing many

4:23

Aussies down more than ever. Isabelle

4:37

has a Hex debt. I

4:39

studied a Bachelor of Arts majoring

4:41

in Media Communications at the University

4:43

of Melbourne. It cost me $20,000

4:45

is what it's currently showing but

4:47

my first year of my degree

4:50

I got as a scholarship so

4:52

that's the other three years. She

4:55

works with us at Mamma Mia now and says

4:57

she's now reached the income threshold required for her

4:59

to have to start paying it back. It's

5:02

currently coming out at $200 a month. Does

5:05

that feel like it sucks a bit considering

5:07

the cost of living crisis we're currently experiencing?

5:09

Yes, 100% and as someone that

5:11

has just moved out of home in

5:13

Sydney with the cost of rent just

5:15

being so extraordinarily high that $200 a

5:17

month does feel like a bit of

5:19

a kick to the gut. Are

5:22

you worried that that debt will affect you later on

5:24

if you haven't paid it all back yet like maybe

5:26

if you're going for a home loan or if you're

5:29

trying to get other loans for example? I

5:31

feel like I haven't thought that far

5:33

ahead just because purchasing a home just

5:35

feels so out of the sphere of

5:39

where I'm at currently. It is something that I'm

5:41

concerned about and it does feel like I've got

5:43

a steep hill to climb which is

5:45

a bit daunting. So taking that

5:47

all into account, do you feel like the

5:49

money that you've outlayed for your university degree

5:52

considering where your career is at now and

5:54

where it can potentially take you compared to

5:56

if you didn't have a degree for example?

6:00

like it was worth it? Yes, I do think

6:02

it was worth it. I mean, having studied media

6:04

and now working in media, I do feel like

6:06

I've got my foot in the door, which I'm

6:08

really lucky that I got that opportunity. I am

6:11

concerned about the future generation like my brother who's

6:13

four years younger than me and he is studying

6:16

the exact same degree arts degree at the University

6:18

of Melbourne and his degree is going to be

6:20

costing him three times more. So that concerns me

6:22

if I was paying the amount he's now going

6:24

to be paying for the same degree, it

6:27

would be probably a different answer. The

6:34

sentiment from Aussies across the nation, whether

6:36

they were students when they were young,

6:38

at the start of their career journey,

6:40

post uni or a mature aged career

6:42

pivot student is whether a university degree

6:44

is still worth it, considering how much

6:46

more expensive it is to study in

6:48

Australia in 2024 and the burden of

6:50

the debt that comes after it. The

6:53

number of Australian students studying for a bachelor's

6:55

degree now is down 13% since 2016, with

6:57

many now

7:00

experiencing something referred to as debt

7:02

aversion, the rising cost of living

7:04

making us skittish around the thought of taking on

7:07

any loans. Prime Minister Anthony

7:09

Albanese finished his degree, a Bachelor of

7:11

Economics at Sydney University, when the agreement

7:13

was still in place created by the

7:16

Whitlam Government where university was free for

7:18

all students. The idea was

7:20

to make tertiary education more accessible

7:22

for working and middle class Aussies.

7:24

Gough Whitlam explained in a pre-election

7:26

speech in 1972 that his government

7:29

would see that a student's merit,

7:31

not their parents' wealth, would decide

7:33

who should benefit from the community's

7:35

vast financial commitment to tertiary education.

7:37

The Australian people no longer accept

7:39

the argument that Australia can't afford

7:41

to give equality of opportunity for

7:44

every child when it leaves school.

7:47

He won that election, and university fees were abolished

7:49

in 1974. In the aftermath, more

7:52

women and more working class students

7:55

did attend university. For

7:57

Anthony Albanese, the son of a single mum who lived

7:59

in... Council housing in Sydney's inner west,

8:01

that meant his pathway to a better

8:04

education was made easier. There

8:06

would be no out-of-pocket fee payments and no

8:08

debt trailing the PM around after he walked

8:10

off campus, degree in hand, in 1984. Five

8:17

years after that, the Hawke Government introduced

8:19

HECS, the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, meaning

8:22

students would start to pay tuition

8:24

fees, but only when they began

8:26

earning a decent wage. Back then, all

8:28

degrees cost the same, $1800 a

8:30

year. In

8:33

1996, the Howard Coalition Government

8:35

brought in a three-tiered rate as fees rose

8:37

from a $2454 flat fee to $3300 for

8:39

degrees on Band 1, like education and humanities,

8:41

up to $5500 for

8:49

Band 3 degrees like law and accounting. The

8:52

idea behind the band structure was that

8:54

if a person's earning ability was higher

8:56

after they finished their degree, they should

8:58

pay more for that education. The

9:00

fees have steadily risen since then. By

9:03

2015, a Bachelor of Law cost around $34,800,

9:05

with additional costs for practical legal training

9:10

programs that added a further $8000 or

9:12

more. A medical degree

9:14

at that time was over $40,000 in tuition

9:16

fees alone for the postgraduate course. When you

9:19

add the Bachelor's degree of between $18,000 and

9:21

$35,000, by 2015, your doctorate of medicine would

9:23

have you

9:26

starting your career around $75,000 in the hole. In

9:33

2017, the Turnbull Government not only increased

9:35

fees again, but also lowered the income

9:37

threshold or the amount you need to

9:39

be earning in order to start paying

9:42

that debt back. In

9:44

2020, the Morrison Government announced they would

9:46

more than double the cost of some

9:48

degrees. Humanity is now in the same

9:50

bracket as law. In order to encourage

9:52

more people into STEM careers, they decreased

9:54

the fees on science and maths degrees.

9:56

Also hoping to plug a dire shortage

9:58

in Australia by 2020. decreasing the

10:00

fees for teaching degrees. A

10:03

fourth band would also be introduced, with band one

10:05

paying $3,950 a year for

10:08

something like nursing, with law accounting and art

10:10

students now looking at $14,500 a year, and

10:14

it kept going out. In

10:16

2024, an undergraduate bachelor degree can cost

10:18

anywhere between $20,000 and $40,000 a year,

10:22

post grad masters up to $50,000, doctoral

10:25

programs up to $42,000. When

10:28

you add it all up, some people are starting out in their

10:30

career over $100,000 in the red. The

10:35

average debt for Australians right now from tertiary

10:37

education is $26,000. But

10:40

for women, it's made all that harder if you take

10:43

time out from work to have children. Indexation,

10:45

especially like we've seen in recent years

10:47

with high inflation, means that debt continues

10:49

to grow, even while you aren't earning

10:51

the money to pay it back. The

10:54

question is, of course, do the salaries you

10:56

can command after earning your degree worth

10:59

the expense of the initial outlay? Andrew

11:02

Norton is a professor in the practice of

11:04

higher education policy at ANU's College

11:06

of Arts and Social Sciences. Andrew,

11:08

with wage growth being slower over the

11:11

past few years here in Australia, has

11:13

the cost of a university degree decreased

11:15

in its earning potential value? Look,

11:18

I think we did go through a period in the 2010s

11:21

where the incomes of early

11:23

career graduates actually went backwards

11:25

compared to previous cohorts. I

11:28

think we've actually seen a recovery since.

11:30

We can see that in higher rates

11:32

of full-time employment. We have

11:34

seen an absolute decline over the very

11:36

long term in graduate wages, but I

11:38

think a higher risk of not getting the

11:41

financial outcomes that students might have hoped to

11:43

get. So if you were to

11:46

start from fresh today, not

11:49

having any of the qualifications you currently have,

11:52

would you feel like a university degree is

11:54

still worth it considering where you are in

11:56

your career today? Look, I

11:58

would, but I went to... University

12:00

a long time ago where it was quite a

12:02

different beast or many fewer students than there are

12:04

now. I guess the work I've

12:06

done in the past is particularly around

12:08

people who haven't done that well

12:10

at school, particularly young men, what

12:13

we found is that many of them would

12:15

have probably been better off going into a

12:18

vocational field than higher education. That's for

12:20

two reasons. One is they've got a high risk

12:22

of not finishing their degree at all and then

12:24

if they do get a degree, quite a lot

12:26

of them seem to be working in jobs. They

12:28

probably could have got straight out of school

12:30

anyway. But for high

12:32

ATAR students and for women,

12:35

generally speaking, your degree seems to be

12:37

still better than the realistic alternative. Would

12:41

that be because women who don't have university degrees

12:43

tend to end up in roles

12:45

that are significantly paying less

12:47

than men in unskilled roles? That

12:50

is the core reason. Even when

12:52

women do vocational education, it's often

12:55

in fairly low paid feminized occupations

12:57

and so often, even though

12:59

that might lead to a job they prefer

13:01

doing in financial terms, it's

13:03

typically not much different from simply taking

13:05

year 12 qualifications and looking for a

13:07

job. Can we focus in

13:09

on women again for a second because women often take

13:11

time out of their careers to have children. We already

13:15

know that they're behind in superannuation by

13:17

the time retirement rolls around but that

13:19

also means that they're no longer working

13:21

for a period of time but with

13:24

indexation happening, their hex debts are

13:27

still growing. Should we

13:29

be looking at that for women in particular to

13:31

maybe freeze indexation for women who are on maternity

13:33

leave, for example, should there be a focus in

13:35

on that? What we've done

13:37

historically about this is we've had

13:39

the student contributions that people pay

13:41

when they go to university linked

13:43

to future incomes and because

13:46

the feminized occupations like teaching and nursing

13:48

are primarily female and they've primarily had

13:50

quite low student contributions compared to other

13:52

courses, what we find is

13:54

on average women borrow less, owe

13:56

less and are indexed less than men.

14:00

in the initial borrowing rather than the

14:04

time of the month. So, if it

14:06

does end up down the track where women do end

14:08

up borrowing as much as men do, do you think

14:10

there should be then a focus on maybe

14:12

freezing that while women are on maternity leave? Look,

14:15

I think for governments, for any of you, it's going

14:17

to be very hard to do. Possibly strict on the

14:19

six months or 12 months maternity leave perhaps, but

14:22

I guess that a system is already designed to

14:24

kind of deal with ups and downs in employment

14:27

levels. And there'll be a

14:29

lot of arguments about why maternity leave, why

14:31

not all the other reasons why someone may

14:33

not be earning a PTL time, which could

14:35

be injury or other reasons why they can't

14:37

work. The chances of

14:39

us returning to fee-free university is very,

14:42

very slim. But

14:44

we have seen some movement now in the

14:46

change in indexation, for example, where we went

14:48

from consumer price index to wage price index,

14:51

which brought it down from that really huge

14:53

jump we saw in 2023 on those hex

14:55

debts. Are

14:58

we doing enough to combat student debt? Do you

15:00

think at this point, are there other things we

15:02

can do to try and limit the

15:04

amount of debt that people are taking into the start

15:06

of their careers? I think that's the

15:08

key issue here, which is the underlying amount of

15:11

debt. And so, I hope

15:13

the government will move reasonably quickly

15:15

on, for example, the very high

15:17

student contributions, about $16,000 for humanities

15:19

course, which is another feminized

15:22

field. And there are

15:24

other little things we can do, like a

15:26

lot of people actually, they stop attending subjects

15:28

but they don't formally drop them. And that

15:30

means they're charged student contributions, so this is

15:32

not doing. And

15:34

we really need to look very,

15:36

very carefully at postgraduate courses, particularly

15:38

those being done very soon after

15:41

someone completes their undergraduate degree. And

15:43

as a result, they can owe $50,000 to $100,000 before they even start their full-time career.

15:48

And I think these are the people

15:50

we're kind of paying more attention to

15:52

because the indexation increase just

15:55

highlighted that a significant minority of

15:57

students do have very large debts.

16:00

Are we across which university degree

16:02

is the best bang for its

16:04

buck? Who has the best

16:06

earning potential compared to how much they

16:08

outlay for their university degree? Typically,

16:11

medicine and engineering have the

16:13

highest incomes, but there's always

16:15

a lot of variation in these things,

16:17

particularly in business courses where you've got

16:19

a huge range of incomes. I

16:22

think generally speaking, the government has

16:24

already essentially accepted the principle of

16:26

going back to a system where

16:28

the underlying charges do reflect long-term

16:31

earnings. I think that is a

16:33

sensible way to help manage the repayment situation.

16:36

Are we potentially moving into US

16:38

territory here where we know that

16:41

a lot of the time it's a select very

16:43

privileged number of people who

16:46

have access to a lot of money

16:48

who end up securing college educations. Are

16:50

we heading towards that territory or

16:52

is that just not even a thing for us?

16:55

I don't think it is a huge thing.

16:57

Where it makes a difference is the kinds

16:59

of school results you get in year 12.

17:02

There's been quite a few studies over the years

17:04

that shows conditional on your ATAR, the

17:06

rates of going to university are

17:08

virtually identical across the socioeconomic spectrum.

17:11

We do have this huge problem where a lot

17:14

of people from disadvantaged backgrounds either

17:16

don't finish year 12 or do finish

17:18

it, but don't get an ATAR or get a

17:20

low ATAR. Until that changes,

17:22

I think we're not going to see

17:25

a radical change in the composition of

17:27

the student enrollment population. There

17:29

are some things we can do. I think

17:31

one of these is the student income support

17:33

system. The number of people getting that has

17:35

been going down over time even though we

17:37

do know it improves completion

17:40

prospects from disadvantaged backgrounds. We

17:42

don't fully understand why the numbers are declining,

17:45

but I'm pretty sure that the means test

17:48

is harder to qualify for the

17:50

benefits than it was in the

17:52

past. Andrew, we do have to also

17:54

make it clear that you obviously are university educated and

17:56

you work at a university. So

17:59

would there ever be a difference? time that you

18:01

would say that a university education is not worth

18:03

its money? I think it's very unlikely

18:05

I would say that as a general proposition

18:07

for everyone but I've sort of already been

18:09

saying it for people whose risks

18:12

of not getting a good outcome are

18:14

high. I've always advocated a fairly

18:16

open system so no artificial caps on

18:18

the number of students but

18:20

people should really think about what are

18:22

the risks of this compared to my alternatives

18:24

which might be vocational education or going

18:26

straight into work. Thanks

18:32

for listening today friends there is an expected

18:34

update to HEX debts coming for us at

18:36

the handing down of the budget in Canberra

18:38

next week. Your Evening Headlines host Isabella Ross

18:40

will be heading to Parliament House to hear

18:42

from the Treasurer and catch the vibe of

18:44

what it feels like to be in the

18:46

Canberra bubble on budget day so we'll keep

18:48

you posted on any further HEX info

18:50

next week. The quickie is produced

18:53

by me Claire Murphy and executive

18:55

producer Taylor Strano with audio production

18:57

by Tom Line.