‘Easy’ tweaks to university rules ‘could save students thousands’

Australian universities can save precious dollars for financially strapped students by making cost-free tweaks to institutional practices that render thousands ineligible for welfare payments, tax breaks, discounted travel fares and free private health insurance. 

Students must be full-time to receive Youth Allowance or Austudy income support or avoid having their scholarship payments taxed. Full-time study is also generally an eligibility requirement for the Tertiary Access Payment relocation subsidy, concession fares on public transport and free inclusion in family health insurance policies.

Under government rules, students are considered full-time if they do at least 75 per cent of their courses’ full-time study load. Some universities base their measurement of study loads over the two main semesters, while others include shorter teaching periods like summer terms.

This means students at some universities render themselves part-time – and therefore ineligible for all sorts of benefits – if they drop subjects during the main semesters, even if they catch up over summer.

Kelly Linden, a student retention specialist at Charles Sturt University, obtained detailed enrolment data from four Australian institutions as part of a year-long Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success fellowship. Two of the unnamed institutions measured equivalent full-time student loads (EFTSLs) over entire calendar years, while the other two only considered the main semesters.

Linden found that about 3,000 students at the latter institutions had missed out on payments and discounts that they would have qualified for at the first two institutions, simply because of institutional methodologies for determining full-time study. “They didn’t qualify for any of the benefits of being full-time, even though they were studying the same loads,” Linden said.

She said it was not “arduous” for universities to change the methodology but many had not recognised a need – reflecting a failure to keep pace with changing enrolment trends, as students adjusted their study patterns to cope with cost-of-living pressures.

“Students can’t just dedicate their whole life to study,” she said. “They’re having to work to survive. The average EFTSL in their university is decreasing. It’s happened across the sector…for the last four or five years at least. University policies haven’t necessarily changed a whole lot over the last few decades. Work is almost never a reason, for example, for special considerations.”

Part-timers made up 34 per cent of Australians who started higher education courses in 2024, according to Education Department statistics. Linden’s study revealed an inverted picture, with just 34 per cent of students across the four universities taking a nominal full-time load of four units per semester.

Twenty-two per cent were studying three subjects, with similar proportions taking two and one. Linden said attendance patterns reflected a variety of conflicting objectives, including pushing ahead with the course, maintaining eligibility for benefits and earning enough to survive.

Linden surveyed almost 1,000 part-time university students across Australia as part of her fellowship. She and colleagues summarised the findings on the Needed Now in Learning and Teaching Substack site, saying many improvements lay within the “sphere of influence” of academics, subject coordinators or university leaders and required no change at government level.

“Understanding” was the single most important request from participants who often felt treated like “half a student”, Linden said. “Engaging lecturers who show compassion for their situation – that was absolutely, by far, the number one most important element to success that students identified.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com