Just wondering if any of the brokers here know about any loan products that are offered to students for the ever-increasing tuition fees many unis are charging for professional degrees? It seems like many full fee graduate courses in areas like law, veterinary science, dentistry, medicine and so on are over the HECS limit which leave students out of pocket by 120k or more (for medicine particularly). I'm sure that most of these students are from well-off families who have the cash to spare but I have heard of people getting private loans as well. Are there really lenders that will give unsecured loans of 120k to students?
I would have thought a person loan product would suffice but that's a good question as I would like to know. Not every potential med student can get scholarships and they are limited for good reasons.
I don't know of any lender out there for something like this and would be surprised if there would be one as it would probably breach the NCCP Act - unless someone was already working how could they demonstrate their ability to repay the loan? HECS or HELP should cover most courses in full. But I guess where someone has already done a degree and goes back for a second or third then it won't.
The FEE-HELP limit (for full-fee, non government subsidised degrees) is about 120k. I believe many of these courses are about 200-250k in total
It looks like the AMA have been campaigning for medical students with parents mortgaging their houses to pay for degree gap costs that FEE HELP does not cover: How much would you pay to become a doctor?
This article is full of “mights”, “maybes” and “possibly’s”. Take it with a pinch of salt. Present medical degrees at mainstream unis fall within the $120K HECS cap. Marg
This course fee cost quoted above isn’t correct for normal domestic students. Even for medicine. The info for the new reforms says: 'The proposed HELP tuition limits for the combined HECS-HELP, FEE-HELP, VET FEE-HELP and VET Student loans are: • $150,000 for students undertaking medicine, dentistry and veterinary science courses, and • $104,440 for other students. The limits are reasonable and sufficient, in most cases, to cover almost nine years of study as a Commonwealth supported student.' https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/hecs-help_fee-help_loan_limit_lp.docx
The fees are correct. Several unis now offer courses that are full fee and in excess of the FEE HELP limit. Macquarie University's medicine degree is only available as a full fee degree (over the limit). Some other universities have both HECS subsidised places as well as full fee places and the latter are generally all over the limit in the fields I mentioned
Not sure why an Australian student would choose to pay full fees? Later edit: googled it and now understand that full fee courses are taken up by local students who fail to get a Commonwealth Supported Place (which is a fraction of the cost). Probably seems like a good investment, given how much Doctors and Dentists etc can earn
Apart from UNSW other universities in NSW require an undergrad degree before undertaking medicine as postgrad. Am I right? If so the undergrad also costs the student.
