A petition to push the decision to make HECS debts easier for students to pay off is steadily gaining attention, reaching 160,000 signatures within a week.

Federal MP Monique Ryan created the petition a week ago with the aim to convince Education Minister Jason Clare to make an official decision about lowering the indexation rate.

In this petition on change.org, Dr Ryan says the HECS debt system is broken and “the government got more money last year from our HECS debts than it did from its main fossil fuel tax.”

Many university students are facing the struggle of having to pay their HECS debt while still studying.

University student Karl Stevenson is currently paying off the debt from his first degree while studying for a second degree.

“Despite how much I work, 20 hours or more a week, plus studying full time, it just continues to rise and rise,” says Mr Stevenson.

Mr Stevenson says HECS can be confusing.

“I knew I would have to pay it back eventually but I feel like it’s something a lot of people aren’t keeping on top of or know what they’re doing.”

According to the Parliament of Australia, the indexation rate increased to 7.1% in 2023 from 3.9% in 2022.

Finance lecturer Zhiyue Sun, from Curtin University, says this is because HECS is directly linked to inflation meaning big increases in HECS payments are due to increased inflation.

“If the index rate is decreased it will adjust the HECS loan balance, making it decrease as well,” says Dr Sun.

The most frustrating issue for Mr Stevenson is that the money never seems to go down.

“I try and pay off a bit every now and then, but that’s very few and far between.”

Dr Sun adds if the indexation rate was decreased, it would not affect the monthly payments but the total amount paid overtime would be much lower.

Mr Stevenson supports decreasing the indexation rate and says it will help a lot of people like him.

“It’s just going to become harder to pay and it’ll be like a mortgage except for us younger people.”