One in four humanities students in Australia to take more than 25 years to pay off student loans, treasury finds

One in four humanities students will take more than 25 years to fully repay their student loans because of Morrison government changes to university fees, newly public Treasury modelling reveals. The job ready graduates program, introduced in 2021 under the former prime minister Scott Morrison , will also leave almost two-thirds of humanities and creative arts students saddled with debts exceeding $50,000. Treasury also found median repayment times for creative arts graduates increasing from 14 to 17 years because of the Morrison-era scheme – which critics point out has been in place longer under Labor than under the last Coalition government. The scheme was introduced to incentivise students to take degrees such as science, nursing, education and IT, and disincentivise humanities, law and creative arts degrees by significantly increasing fees. The university sector has said the scheme hasn’t changed students’ choices. The modelling, released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information rules, was prepared in May 2025. It shows that the number of graduates leaving university with debts under $20,000 has doubled, the number of students with debts over $50,000 has increased by 70%, and humanities students are set to pay off their debts into their 40s. …