Tuesday, 15 July 2008

AUSSIE Students & student loans (or lack thereof)

As much as we go on about student loans and allowances, many of you will be shocked that in Aussie these rarely exist. There is no student loan system to borrow your 150 a week, and only those whose parental income is under some bloody low figure (like 30,000) can apply for a hardship allowance.

Students are forced to work (quite a lot) to get by or scrimp from their parents. Accordingly many students opt for part time study so they can balance work and study.

Rudd is considering bringing in a student loan scheme - but they NUS (national union of students) is not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing. On one hand they can see them facing 10Billion of student debt like we currently have. On the other hand they can see students better supported to live whilst they study. Interesting..

There is a scheme called HECS which pays your student fees - so in this regard they have a similar system to us. You have to pay back your HECS once you start earning around 35k or more a year...... Interestingly their HECS is bloody expensive compared to ours as well - around 8k a year for a law student.

Yet in all this - the Times Higher Education Supplement - or THES - which ranks universities worldwide - ranks the Aussie universities pretty highly compared with ours... ANU is around 16 in the world - and Melbourne Uni, Sydney Uni, University of Queensland, NSW University and Monash are all inside the top 50 in the world. NZ boasts Auckland at number 50, Otago at 117 and Canterbury at 188 (the number 12 University in Australasia).

1 comment:

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