Melbourne's Noni Bridger is one of more than 1 million university students in Australia. The 20 year-old has 12 contact hours a week for her arts degree and diploma in language at Melbourne University, which she fits in around another 30 hours of study and 12 hours a week at a burger restaurant.
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Amid her work and studies, Bridger is keeping an anxious eye on Canberra, where the federal government is trying to increase fees and decrease funding for universities.
"It's a bit hard not to take notice of it, it's a bit scary," she says.
Bridger, who is lucky to end the fortnight with $15 in her account, says she can't imagine ever being able to buy things like a house and a car with a growing student debt hanging over her head.
"There's going to be no capacity for me to have any other type of debt."
On Wednesday night, as Bridger was studying in the student lounge on campus, sweeping changes to the university sector were given the thumbs up by the House of Representatives.
If they are also approved by the Senate, they would see student fees rise by 1.8 per cent from next January, and by as much as 7.5 per cent by 2021. There will also be a 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend applied to government payments to universities for 2018 and 2019. And the earnings threshold at which HECS-HELP is repaid will be lowered from about $52,000 to $42,000.
Combined with other measures, the package would save $3.8 billion over five years, representing the largest savings measure in the 2017 budget.
But while the government had hopes of ushering the package through the Senate this week, by the time Parliament rose on Thursday night, this major budget announcement was still languishing on the to-do list. In part, this is because the media reform package ended up dominating political play. But the government still doesn't have the numbers in the Senate either.
This is not the Coalition's first attempt at university funding reform. It tried and failed to cut funding by 20 per cent and deregulate fees in the 2014 budget. And an alternative suggestion to deregulate some fees also failed to find friends. But despite coming back with yet another revised proposal for savings, the Coalition nonetheless has an almighty fight on its hands. The opposition is coming not just from Labor (who don't like the "big, fat cuts") and the Greens (who say it will stop kids going to uni), but the university sector as a whole. This is unlike the debate over fee deregulation, where students disagreed with universities over the proposed changes.
Education Minister Simon Birmingham has argued there have been "rivers of gold" flowing into higher education since 2009 when the then Labor government uncapped enrolments in bachelor level courses (which are subsidised by the government). Birmingham talks of an "enormous growth" in taxpayer dollars for universities: "[with] 71 per cent growth in funding just for teaching and learning in our universities, running at twice the rate of economic growth."
He also points to Australia's HECS-HELP debt.
"Our loan book has ballooned out from about $20 billion just six, seven years ago to $50 billion today. Around one-quarter of that is estimated not to be being repaid," he told Sky News this week.
But the sector heartily disagrees with this assessment. Universities Australia say the changes will see job losses and erode student support services, while Australia's elite universities say they will be left "financially crippled" by Birmingham's bill. In a passionate speech to a conference in Canberra on Thursday, Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson accused the government of "working against the success of everything we stand for" and filling the debate with "alternative facts".
She pointed out that on average, "leading" Australian universities are only 40 per cent federally funded. And argued rather than a 71 per cent revenue growth over the last eight years, the increase in total funding is the result of an increase in student numbers – given places are now uncapped – so universities are doing more.
An OECD report released this week found that in world terms, Australian households and international students account for a high share of university expenditure, spending 48 per cent compared to the OECD average of 22 per cent.
Thomson also warned that Australia's standing in international rankings and ability to attract the lucrative international student dollar are also at risk with the proposed bill. She quoted the Times Higher Education global rankings editorial director Phil Baty who last week said, "Australia's leading institutions are already falling behind peers in mainland China and Hong Kong, who receive high and sustained levels of [government] funding".
So, as the government looks to convincing Senate deal maker Nick Xenophon to grant it the crucial votes it needs to pass the reforms, who is right?
Grattan Institute higher education program director Andrew Norton told Fairfax Media there is a confusing "lack of consensus" around what the government's per student funding is for. While ostensibly it is for teaching, Norton says the legislation does not specify this and in practice, it is also used to fund research and normal operations.
Curtin University higher education policy researcher Tim Pitman adds while research is critical to universities rankings and prestige, it is very costly and "not properly funded".
But despite this imbalance, industry experts say it is highly unlikely universities will collapse as a result of the government's proposals. In a blog post from June, Norton wrote: "overall the last decade has been exceptionally good for universities, with the strongest increases in total public funding for decades and the strongest growth in private funding ever."
Indeed, one element that is increasingly essential to university coffers is the very healthy international student market, which generates about $15 billion a year. As of 2016, there were more than 300,000 international students enrolled in higher education in Australia, up almost 13 per cent on 2015.
However, Melbourne University higher education researcher Gwilym Croucher cautions that while these funds are vital, the reliance on the international dollar makes the sector vulnerable. While times are good at the moment, the market is competitive and fickle students could decide to take their money elsewhere. "Part of the big concern here is we're betting the house of higher education in Australia on international student fees," he says.
Croucher adds, this becomes a further problem if funds are cut and educational standards drop: "[The international student boom] relies on us having a world-class system."
Meanwhile, students are applying for degrees and planning their studies next year without knowing exactly how much they will pay. And time is running out for the government to sort things out in time for the planned January 2018 start date. There are only another four Senate sitting weeks left this year.
But if the university sector is proving difficult to wrangle, the Senate is proving to be an even trickier beast. One Nation's votes are not locked it, David Leyonhjelm says he won't vote for a watered-down package and the Nick Xenophon Team's crucial three votes appear unlikely if the bill stays in its current form.
As the bill passed the lower house on Wednesday, NXT MP RebekhaSharkie said the bill was just "tinkering around the edges" and does not address bigger problems like youth unemployment and a skill shortages.
Sharkie also issued this ominous warning to any ministers wanting a quick resolution to the debate: "What we need is a comprehensive review of higher education that involves federal and state governments, universities and the vocational education apprenticeships sector around the table.
"We need a comprehensive review, akin to the Gonski-led review of education."
Gonski 3.0, anyone?
