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Preparing for her work placement later this year, second-year nursing student Olivia Stokes had been looking at the requirement with dread.
In order to graduate, the students must complete 800 hours.
"As a student going on placement full-time, you don't get to work much at all - or at all. It's a real stress. Yeah, it just makes everything so difficult because then you're like: oh, what if I need to work on the weekend - and then and it's a full eight hour days. You get tired and sometimes it makes it really difficult to go on placement as well - because you're not being able to put in your best effort."
A member of the Nursing and Midwifery Society of students at the University of Technology Sydney, Ms Stokes says it is something that has a huge impact on other students in the society.
"So lots of students have actually dropped out because they can't afford it, which is really sad and unfortunate because we do need more nurses. Hopefully from this paid placement, more people will study nursing because it's a lot less stressful now."
The federal government has confirmed it will be adopting the recommendation made in a major review* (the Universities Accord) of the university sector - completed in February - to provide a payment to help with cost-of-living expenses while students undertake compulsory work placements in teaching, social work, nursing or midwifery.
The payment will be around $320 per week during the placement periods.
It will be means-tested and available from 1 July next year.
It is expected to benefit around 68,000 higher education students; and 5,000 vocational education and training students.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare says the federal government will be providing a fuller response to the 47 recommendations of the Universities Accord review.
Part of delivering that response, he says, will include a focus on ensuring students from lower socio-economic backgrounds can access tertiary education.
"By the middle of this century, we need 80 per cent of the workforce to have a uni degree or a TAFE qualification and that we've got to break down the artificial barrier between TAFE and uni to make it easier for people to move between the two. And we've also got to break down the invisible barrier that stops a lot of kids from places like where I grew up, from going to university in the first place to open those doors of opportunity. What we're talking about today is about the cost of living, providing financial support for teaching students and nursing students and social work students. What you'll see more of on budget night is the cost of kids missing out on going to university in the first place."
88 per cent of Australia's nurses are female, with similar gender ratios in the other caring professions.
Mr Clare says the new measure will improve gender equity.
"And I guess another observation is about 60 per cent of students at uni are women, and these are such important jobs. They're jobs where not everybody who starts the degree finishes it. Only one in two people who started teaching degree finish it. Part of the reason for that is the course. I'm reforming the course. Part of the reason is the challenges of paying the bills while you're doing the prac."
The federal government announced on the weekend (5 May) that the federal budget would also wipe 3-billion-dollars worth of student debt.
That would mean a saving of $1,200 for individuals with an average student debt of $26,500.
The indexation method will be changed to keep pace with either the inflation rate or the wage price index - whichever is lower.
Last year, the consumer price index rose to three-decade high, meaning student debts soared by 7.1 per cent versus 3.2 per cent, which was the rate of the wage price index.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the federal budget will focus on balancing cost-of-living relief, with the need to keep inflation in check - and also the national interest.
"I said on election night I wanted to widen the doors of opportunity. That's what Labor governments do; and that's what my government is doing. We should also make sure that people who want to do a course, want become a teacher, want to become a nurse, don't go: oh, I'd really like to do that, but I just can't afford to do so. And that's why this measure is practical and so important."
Griffith University Vice Chancellor Carolyn Evans says both measures have been long called for by the university sector.
She says universities have done their best to provide one-off bursaries to support students, but the sector does not have the resources to deal with the scale of the problem.
Particularly when it comes to what's become known as placement poverty, she says there is a noticeable impact on the ability of students to complete their degrees - including those from culturally diverse backgrounds.
"We did a bit of work at Griffiths with respect to our nursing midwifery courses though, which suggested that a decent percentage, maybe up to 15 per cent of those who did drop out, did so because of the financial pressures caused by placement poverty. And certainly we know anecdotally it's even something that stops people starting those courses in the first place. Some of the areas that Griffith has university campuses in, like Logan for example, which is an area with a very multicultural population, but also some quite ingrained poverty. We hear from school principals, and we hear from the students, and sometimes the parents themselves that the concern about the cost of going to university full stop is very much something that's on people's minds when they decide whether to go to university. And that's particularly acute for first in family and for communities, for Indigenous communities, Maori and Pasifika refugee communities where perhaps there isn't a lot of history in the family of going to university; or further education."
She says the HECS and HELP student loan relief is also likely to improve equity, but she says there needs to be a recalibration of the 2021 decision to disproportionately increase the fees of humanities degrees, with the stated aim of incentivising students to study a STEM subject.
"The so-called Job Ready Graduates program it hasn't made a lot of change overall (in what students choose to enrol in). But some of my colleagues, particularly who work in some of the poorer regions, have seen actually it's poor kids being pushed out of those (humanities) areas. So there's still fine choice for middle and high income students, but a lot of students who are in more financially precarious situations are perhaps being discouraged from those degrees - and they shouldn't be. And students are just really being paid quite unfair amounts of difference in terms of how much the government supports different degrees; and how much charge for degree, which has no good basis in our view in public policy."
Research by Health Workforce Australia shows that, due to the aging workforce and many other factors, there could be a shortfall of more than 100,000 nurses by 2025 - that number increasing to 123,000 by 2030.
Olivia says she would also like to see broader uptake by state governments of the initiative announced in Queensland of a $5,000 allowance for nursing and midwifery students to complete placements in regional, rural and remote Australia in their final year of study.
"I am sure that many students who want go on rural and regional remote placements. It's definitely something that I want to do. Yeah ,it would be great to get those funds to go do that. Because we definitely need more nurses in those areas as well."
