Quote Originally Posted by greybeard_ View Post
The HECS / HELP system will remain in place so if students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds have the grades they can stil go to uni and pay the money back later. Of course these students will now be loaded up with a much greater level of debt and be required to start repaying the loan at a much lower salary threshold. Also the loan itself will attract more interest. Apparently academic scholarships will be made available to low income / high performing students but there won't be many of these comparatively speaking.

students from wealthy families with poor academic results will benefit most from these changes. So too Australias top tier universities who can now charge more for their degrees. Students from less affluent families with average to good academic grades lose out. Australia's 2nd and 3rd tier unis will lose status and may end up becoming more like those community college things they have in the USA
So we will migrate from a system based on merit to one based on money!
This may be good in the short term for some but does not sound good for the national interest ...