Job Ready Graduates requires urgent reform, but current proposal risks more university cuts

The Job Ready Graduates (JRG) system is overly complex, inequitable, misaligned with graduate outcomes, and runs contrary to the Universities Accord’s recommendations. 

We have advocated from the outset for remediation of JRG.

For some time now there has been common ground on diagnosing the failures of JRG and an emerging consensus on pathways to reform. The sector needs to work with government to find practical, long-term solutions in a fiscally tight budget climate. 

A minimal reform consensus would include: 

1. Fixing fee distortions (especially extreme humanities pricing
2. Improving equity and access 
3. Simplifying the funding system 
4. Reducing reliance on blunt price signals 
5. Rebalancing public vs private contributions 
6. Integrating reform into broader system redesign (cf. the Universities Accord). 

The Innovative Research Universities (IRU) latest analysis of JRG impacts on commencing domestic Bachelor students shows that JRG is affecting the Government’s broader higher education policy objectives, and that JRG has had an outsized and disproportionate impact on low SES, regional and remote, women and Indigenous students – risking the government’s equity and access targets.

Maintaining JRG status quo means that the Government is not going to hit the equity goals set for population parity, or for tertiary attainment targets out to 2050, or even the interim goals.

Hence, we welcome the work behind the Bill, currently before the Senate.

We agree that JRG urgently requires reform, but we do not think that the proposal in the Bill to revert student contribution amounts for a place in a unit of study in Law, Accounting, Administration, Economics, Commerce, Society and Culture and Communications to pre-JRG levels is a workable solution.

Saving on the student contribution but doing nothing on the Commonwealth contribution would add significantly to the budget problems facing a huge proportion of universities in the sector, risking further rounds of redundancies in a sector that is already witnessing significant cuts to HASS courses, many of which are vital not only to the Australian economy but also our national security.

It is our position that reform should be understood not as a technical adjustment, but as a strategic reinvestment in Australia’s future capability.  

We are supportive of the IRU’s principles for JRG reform. Their proposal is akin to the Universities Accord’s recommendation for a three-tier system “remedying negative and unanticipated outcomes from the JRG package, supporting substantial growth in skills quantity and quality and increased participation and attainment from under-represented groups, evolving over time to meet the needs of the nation”.

The Academy recommends: 

1. Replacing the JRG package with a fair, evidence-informed funding model that restores equity, improves system efficiency, and invests in Australia’s long-term sovereign capability. Remediating JRG requires addressing extreme funding differentials in student contributions and balancing this with increases to Commonwealth contributions to ensure adequate funding on the university side.
2. The accumulated evidence demonstrates that JRG is not only ineffective – it is economically inefficient, socially regressive, and strategically misaligned with Australia’s future needs.
   • • Replace JRG with a fit-for-purpose funding model: Move from a model based on price signals and behavioural assumptions to one grounded in public value and system performance.
     • Restore fairness and proportionality in student contributions: Establish a balanced contribution framework that avoids structural overcharging of particular fields and reduces excessive lifetime debt burdens.
     • Invest in sovereign capability and national resilience. Increasingly we are going to need an education system that supports cross-disciplinary study and encourages integration between technical and social capabilities (STEM and HASS). Humanities provide a national infrastructure, essential for:
   1. 1. 1. 1. Democratic resilience and civic capability
            2. Social cohesion in a multicultural society 
            3. Geopolitical and regional literacy
            4. Ethical governance and regulatory capacity in emerging technologies.
3. Prevent further erosion of language programs, areas studies, cultural and historical expertise. Our own work on Asia Capability – the subject of a current Parliamentary Inquiry – is a case in point. There is no entity in the current system responsible for tracking national priority areas, gaps and opportunities.  It is our view that ATEC is best positioned to take on this role and be resourced to monitor sovereign capability across the disciplines for the nation and set benchmarks through mission-based compacts.

We acknowledge that it is politically difficult for government and the higher education sector to agree on reforms that do not leave some students worse off. But Australia cannot afford prevarication and piecemeal change in a sector that is so fundamental to our social and economic future. JRG is holding the system back. We need robust, dispassionate and transparent costings and frank assessment of the options not populist gestures that tackle one aspect of a complex policy framework, leaving the institutions and the students in higher education potentially worse off because of inevitable course closures and hence a lack of access for young Australians to their preferred areas of study. 

This includes a well-evidenced discussion with government about these longer-term issues of debt, debt servicing and borrowing. The UK provides the clearest real-world example of what happens when a high-fee, high-loan model becomes the dominant financing mechanism: the burden does not stay confined to students; it progressively distorts institutions and ultimately reappears on the public balance sheet. 

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