Servicing Debt

The Age has run a story about a proposal for students to pay off their HECS debt by volunteering. It sounds, more or less, like a form of pseudo-employment. The article raises several reasons why it might not be such a good idea, including students need income support, students need money to pay living expenses etc.

Professor Chapman, who helped design HECS, in the article:

"If you wanted to relieve the burden for students generally, it's got to be about income support while they're studying," he said. "That's far and away more important."

We should also note that students from lower SES backgrounds are more likely to defer HECS. This scheme would be just extracting more from the poor.