I knew university was going to be expensive, but I never realised the scale of the sacrifice that I’d make pursuing my interests. By the end of this year I’ll owe more than $35,000 in Hecs-Help debt, and by the time I complete my Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney, that number will likely surpass $60,000.

When I first started university in 2021 – first in the family and hailing from a public school in western Sydney – I thought of Hecs debts as this amorphous and abstract idea. Hecs was something we didn’t need to worry about until later in life, once we had a full-time and well-paying job. There was no way I was going to make an early contribution, not with the $7,000 I’d saved from working at Coles since I was 15.

I was comforted by the fact I was told it was so dissimilar to the student loans in the US, and that my degree would cost less than overseas. But a few weeks into my first semester I learnt I was unlucky, having enrolled after the Morrison government introduced the job-ready graduates package, which hiked the costs of........

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