By Sophie Blewitt
Every student at the ANU has felt the effects of the Job-ready Graduates (JRG) scheme, a Morrison-era policy that subsidised degrees in STEM fields by up to 59 per cent, while dramatically increasing fees for the arts and humanities. Commencing on 1 January 2021, the scheme was intended to incentivise students to select careers in STEM, hiking costs of arts degrees to more than $50,000.
Recent lobbying by Independent Senator David Pocock has put pressure on the Labor government to reverse the scheme, as it has reduced enrolments and created a “segregated” higher education system, “where only students from wealthy backgrounds can study things like law”.
Research by Innovative Research Universities (IRU) found that enrolments into higher education from students with low-SES backgrounds reduced by 9.8 per cent between 2020 and 2024. At the same time, enrolments for non-low-SES students reduced by only 2.2 per cent. The effects were especially felt in enrolments for courses in the highest-charging band (including Arts, humanities, and some communication studies), where enrolments from low-SES students have decreased by 19.7 per cent.
The JRG scheme, despite being positioned as an “investment” into Australian higher education, led to $1.2 billion less in funding into higher education in 2024 than would have been expected had the scheme not been introduced. Even where degree costs were subsidised, enrolments have not been affected dramatically. In the courses with the lowest costs (including Education and Nursing), enrolments from students from low-SES backgrounds had only increased by 2.1 per cent between 2020 and 2024, as found by the IRU this year.
On 28 April, ANUSA President Charley Ellwood spoke to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee about the effects of the JRG scheme on both ANU students and the nation as a whole. He described the policy as “a financial attack on the students who have chosen the ANU to study their passion, and a fundamental challenge to our establishing vision”.
Ellwood elaborated on this position in a statement to Observer, noting that the ANU is “obviously… a heavy humanities-based university”.
“The JRG made ANU degrees more expensive. The funny thing is, though, it didn’t actually impact our [undergraduate] enrolments because the biggest fundamental failure of the policy is that it fails to understand basic microeconomic choice… people want to study politics because they like politics.”
“It doesn’t necessarily disincentivise a student from choosing to study what they’re interested in, but it disincentivises them from doing postgraduate study and research.”
As postgraduate enrolments “plummet” at the ANU, the university’s research output worsens. Ellwood argues this speaks to the true effect of the JRG scheme, which is to establish the university as merely a method of maximising career income, rather than as a public good.
“The ANU produces amazing research that changes Australia and changes the world. If we aren’t valuing that and viewing it purely as ‘oh, I’m going to study to get a job’, you lose the university as a public good.”
The Labor government has been accused of not approaching the “failed” policy with enough urgency. The Greens Education spokesperson, Mehreen Faruqi, recently stated, “This Labor government talks a big game on equity in higher education but sees no urgency to undo the very policy that is prohibiting low-SES students from accessing the degrees of their choice”.
Ellwood said to Observer that he was hopeful the policy might be repealed “in the next couple years,” noting that the government is receiving increasing pressure from students and universities.
“We know it’s an expensive thing to repeal,” he added, “about $1 billion… but we have a lot of very politically active students [who] understand where the government can find that money”.
In the meantime, the ANU, as a largely humanities-based university, will continue to feel the financial effects of the JRG scheme.
More to come.
Graphics by Olivia Abraham
ANU Observer 