Are you at Newy Uni?

If so, 3 subjects, or 30 units, is 100% full time still. 2 subjects, or 20 units, is not.

I got caught out with this in one of the first few years of uni in relation to health insurances.

How bout yall both move to glorious Lake Macquarie, where the only cyclones you need worry about are the paddle pop versions.

Did a "6 month" TAFE course (which realistically was online reading that was available for 6 months but realistically only needed a day or two of study, 3 on-site learning days & 1 day of exams) and man, TAFE is a completely different world to Uni! I went in feeling stupidly underprepared, but came out feeling extremely overprepared. Just a different world altogether than what I'm used to. 

But I got my extra little qualifcation (well, I have to do a logbook monitoring my hours for 2 years now) and happy days, the system works!

Someone explain to me the idea of HECS debt. I'll use a real example:

The Mrs has a HECS debt of $30k or something. She earns over whatever the threshold is, so thru her pay/tax/whatever she pays a certain amount over that threshold to her HECS debt. I understand that is a thing.

But what I don't understand is each year because of interest/inflation/whatever the debt rises (I understand why) but I'm pretty sure each year the debt gets higher than the amount she was forced to pay. So the debt is actually never going down, but gradually going up. But she's not forced to pay anymore, because it's still only that percentage of her wage above the threshold or whatever.

So my question is - for the rest of her life will it just slowly but surely build up, to the point that it goes up to say 100k? And when she passes away, or doesn't have an income anymore because of say retirement, seemingly never having paid that debt, do our kids/grandkids get left with it? I guess my question is what is the end game with HECS? Does anyone actually ever pay it off? When in our lives comes a time when the government says "oi, you actually need to start reducing this value"? I just don't understand it at all, it's like it's never destined to be paid off. 

Anyone know what happens? 

If she is earning enough to pay it off, so she is earning more than $54869 and should be paying off at least $2194.76 each year. The interest on HECS this year was 1.5% so a $30000 HECS debt should have increased by $450. That means her HECS debt should be at least $1744.76 less than last year.

To my understanding if you die your HECS debt dies with you.

Correct.

I really hate that your HECS debt dies with you.

I don't. I really hate that most people have to go into debt to go to University. Two people I went to university with died in car crashes travelling to university just weeks before graduating, why should their family and friends be further burdened with a debt the person had no chance to repay that they had to take out to try to start their lives.

True that, not all cases are the same. However people who do 3 degrees and rack up 120k in debt (a mate has a 3 year performing arts degree, a 2 year business degree (part done) and a 3 year performing arts degree) and then decided he wanted to be an actor. He has been out of uni for 3 years and said he's lucky to have been paid the threshold in total over the 3 years.

Are we meant to just write this sort of shit off as bad debt?

I agree with you on that case. I am of the opinion that your first degree should be free but if you fail any course you should have to pay the course fee to redo it. Many people I went to uni with deliberately failed course the first time so they could get higher marks the second time around and the system let them expunge failures from their record.

Oh look, the religious nuts favourite topic: debt.

Religious nut?

You're really shit at paraphrasing my millennial friend. Have another chai late.

Fortunately, ownership of most debt is non-transferable. Families cannot be burdened with credit card debt or other personal debt left over from their loved ones. The institutions which issued the debt can look to the assets held in the estate to have the debts settled. It is unlikely that first year university students would have enough assets to cover their debt obligations so in the event of their death, the government would write off their debt as non-recoverable. This would be just like when financial institutions are unable to settle debts as there are no assets left in the estate.
I do not see the problem with the government trying to recover debts from deceased estates. When most people enter the workforce out of University, they will be issued with an insurance policy in their superannuation. This should go towards their HECS/HELP debt first.

I agree. Even if say they recover 20%. If we want cheaper tertiary education, we need to do something. Bad debt and people not repaying HECS debts is part of the pressure causing 'deregulation' discussions to happen.

We're so very very fortunate that we have such an education system. People point to Germany and their free tertiary system as the gold standard. It is not. Places are severely restricted.

I think if you change within a year you get some leeway. Some people go into a course that doesn't suit them or they can't hack it. It's when people give up in 2nd or 3rd year it's an issue. By then you've had enough time to assess the course requirements. It's tough though, 1st-2nd year engineering was like going from year 8 to year 12 in one jump.


I don't think anything will change. The idealists like myself would just like to see more efficiency from the system.  

So i enquiried about building  surveying course with vu.  Still tossing betweem that and drafting

Thanks guys, very insightful. Will have to check the Mrs' figures - I'm confident she said it's rising and not going down.. 

Unreal as always, FFT family.

FWIW I don't like the idea of debt being written off, it doesn't make sense to me. 

Late to the party here but when I went OS for four years I came back to an increased HECS debt.  

Fortunately interest rates were only 4 or 5% from memory.  Having said that though if they were 8, 9 or 10% and you weren't paying your debt off it'd increase pretty quickly and you could find yourself in real strife.

Yeah not technically an interest rate, rises with CPI, although in saying that if CPI were to drop there's no way they'd make the debt smaller lol

-PB

4 modules through my MPA with a HD, a Distinction and 2 credits.

Wouldn't be so bad if I had actually studied the amount they asked me to.

What pisses me off/makes me happy is the final exam questions are extremely similar to the sample papers.  Besides rote learning that, answering multiple choices online while googling in another tab and sacrificing maybe 4 hours to bullshit a 2000 word essay, they may as well just hand me my certificate so I can move on.

One of those situations where something which should be hard is so easy you start getting suspicious

Lecturers are usually incredibly lazy - my exams are full of past tutorial/assignment questions. 

Don't mind it as I don't have to sweat too much to do well hahaha

Do you sometimes just wonder why the hell you're there though?

The uni gets paid, we get our degrees, the learning seems like the crappy red tape both sides have to go through

Yeah sorta, I think about it sort of as a transaction instead of an education.

Sure I'm learning how to do shit but at the end of the day it's money for a piece of paper.

I actually like the Australian system. Here is Sweden it is in simple terms free for Uni and you take a loan for income (instead of Austudy). 

I dont think people should expect free uni and Austudy. 

Having free uni means that if you come from a well off family and can live with or be supported by them you can become a professional student and come out of it with no debt. While others struggle. 

I think you should pay for the service the uni provides. I also think you should pay for it after you die, if you have enough money in your estate, because you have used the service. 

100% similar experience I have had recently in a course I did. I sat there at the end of it thinking was it really that easy, surely not, is this the introduction part. It's like when you order Thai food and it is served super quickly, you start questioning why....

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Thanks for that

Update. Probably will still move to Queensland one day but landed a full time gig.