Drafting of the original Jobs Ready Graduate legislation left students in hons programmes who had not started their final year slugged for the new discipline fees

For somebody like Maxwell Yong, the Uni Melbourne policy whiz who demonstrated that JRG doesn’t work (CMM October 20 ) this meant an extra $5000 in fees, due to the increased cost for his hons year in economics.

The coalition planned to correct this, but its bill died when the election was called.

However the new government is on to it, with the snappily titled Higher Education Support Amendment (2021 Measures No. 1) Bill 2021, set to correct.

Which is good for students unfairly slugged. As Mr Yong puts it, “this amendment wipes thousands of dollars off my HECS-HELP debt, so I’m pretty happy about that. … students are no longer paying for a legislative error.”

What’s less great for institutions is that the bill requires the unis to pay back the higher fees to students who should have been grandfathered in the first place.

The bill’s explanatory memorandum states it requires providers to make a  “re-credit of an affected student’s HELP balance and/or a refund of an excess up-front payment amount to the student.”

And to encourage them to remember to do it, “compliance with the application and transitional provisions is taken to be a condition of a grant made to a higher education provider.”

But not to worry, the EM adds “as the changes to grandfathering arrangements are not expected to affect large numbers of students, the financial impact on higher education providers and the Commonwealth is expected to be negligible.

To which the learned Andrew Norton (ANU) responds, “as missing honours students in the original JRG grandfathering provision was the Commonwealth’s mistake they should cover all the costs rather than penalise universities.”