Opinion
To: Education Minister the Hon Jason Clare
Dear Mr Clare,
Well done on the paid prac expansion. Now there’s just the small matter of the other couple of hundred thousand students not getting the extra dough who are feeling that little bit worse about the size of their debt.
This is a big weekend for you, and not just because you have pulled through with a news win to kick off day 1. As the party faithful gather for the 50th anniversary conference in the glorious Adelaide Convention Centre this weekend, it is an important opportunity to take stock, but more importantly, quietly start to shore up the numbers to lock in generational reform. We are happy to help, so we have mapped out some of the background to pass around to the backbenchers so they can have a read during the boring sessions.
1. Not just a party for the party
This weekend marks not only the 50th anniversary of ALP national conferences, but also a special milestone for you – on Saturday you move past David Kemp as the second-longest serving Education Minister in 30 years. Even more exciting, you will move past that icon of education reform, John Dawkins, as the longest-serving Education Minister in Australian history in just 111 days.
We all know how it worked for Dawkins – the Minister had his name attached to a transformation of the sector that was by no means universally popular, but certainly recognised as shaping the evolution of the tertiary sector for a generation. The Dawkins reforms, as they became known, earned a place in the history books charting the evaluation of Australian Tertiary Education.
By our calculations, November 11 will be your big day, taking over as the longest serving/surviving Education Minister for Australia. So it’s time to start planning your legacy.
The question is, as you progress into historic territory, will you be picking up a mantle of The Great Debt Collector or The Great Reformer?
2. Hard to grab attention away from the sticker price.
It’s generally agreed that the next phase of generational reform is required for tertiary education. Opinions vary on the nature and scope, but the case for reform was already strong, and you have spent four years making it stronger – pointing out a cavalcade of issues across governance, management, operations, integrity and sustainability. In response you have restructured the vibe from lassiez-faire to a nationally-regulated, but that doesn’t cut a lot of mustard with the peeps who are IOUing their future hard-earned in return for the education experience that you have told us is too often not up to scratch.
The problem is, despite all the work you have put in, for every year you avoid dismantling the Job Ready Graduates scheme, there are a couple of hundred thousand students paying extra for their degree, racking up hundreds of million in debt.
While the arts-business-law crowd are paying up to 90% of the cost of their degree, the entire sector is losing $1.18b per year compared to pre-JRG arrangements (2024 figure), as well as taking a major hit on international revenue thanks to visa hikes and quasi caps, meaning that while prac students are getting some relief from the cost of living, every student is affected by less cash for the sector. It suddenly looks less like Robin Hood when the whole picture comes into view.
At the same time, this generation of students who could be termed ‘Clare’s Cohort’ are struggling with a massive cost of living crunch – with rents up 40%, groceries up 27%, and power up 39% since 2021. So the people who never used to even look at their HECS bill are suddenly getting debt savvy – at the same time as they are paying the highest price for a degree in our nation’s history.
Of course some students are getting cheaper degrees through JRG and paid pracs – but history will not be written by the first responders who are simply now able to pay rent.
So while the $20b debt forgiveness on existing student debt in 2025 was a bouquet for those who had studied in the past and a savvy electoral move for those who have already left the system, it makes the taste of $52,000 arts, business and law degrees even more bitter for Clare’s Cohort – expanding the gap between relatively affordable degrees of the past and the current price tag. The Prac Payments are great for some, but aren’t going to help your Accord outcomes much.
3. Patience with Politics is Thin
You haven’t squandered your time in post. The challenge is your mates don’t want to loosen the purse strings enough for you to make the Accord a reality, which confines you to a moment of debt forgiveness largesse and then not enough dough to get the job done. And the longer JRG goes, the more your vision for equity and access recedes. You have said the next step for people to save cash is to do a TAFE qualification instead of first year uni. You also said that you are going to wait until ATEC gives you some insights on pricing in late 2027, which is expected to mean no action until 2028. Given JRG is eroding access for under-represented cohorts, you are going to need your mates to come on board quickly if you are not going to be remembered primarily by the couple of hundred thousand directly affected by JRG and their families as the man who refused to drop prices for the majority of your incumbency. In fact if we consider the number of students and their families as well as staff, we get to well over the half million voting-age Australians at rough count, which is a pretty significant bloc.
4. Will you keep the big stick out?
You deserve credit for a relentless energy in calling out and acting on issues that had been left untouched for far too long in the sector. The question is whether big brother always knows best. There are well over 300 separate regulatory and reporting obligations for universities alone, and that is before we get to responses to antisemitism and further governance issues in the pipeline. At which point do we say, hey, maybe central control and annual compliance requirements are no longer the only approach – and we would like the sector to be better than just focused on satisfying a bare minimum standard of decency and integrity? As long as the sector obliges by continuing to commit obviously stupid management and governance errors, you can continue to divert attention away from JRG by fulfilling the hard man role on policing. But cleaning up the dirty laundry, while essential and laudable, has nothing like the sector-transformation impact of the reforms initiated by the Honorable Dawkins. You could break the stick in two and hand the pieces over to Barney and Kerri-Lee, but to shake off the Debt Collector tag, we need to help your mates understand what’s going on out there in Elizabeth and Elsternwick and Emu Plains.
Which is why this weekend is really important. We want to help. You can’t do it on your own, even though they have kept you in the Big Chair all this time. We know the Party has to get on board if a couple of hundred thousand students are going to get a fairer deal over the next two or three years. Faster action on JRG is going to be essential if, come November, the Longest Serving Education Minister In Australian History, is to be remembered as a true reformer, and not as The Great Debt Collector.
Have a truly great weekend.