Abbie May has a business degree but said she doesn’t use it in her current or previous marketing jobs. (Source: Instagram/Abbie May)
An Australian business owner has shared why she regrets going to university as she is hit with an “insane” HECS debt bill every tax time. Millions of Australians will have seen their student debts cut by 20 per cent by next week and while it’ll be welcome relief, many are still questioning whether their debt was worth it.
Abbie May graduated with a Bachelor of Business majoring in marketing and HR in 2020, along with a HECS debt of around $38,000. The Gold Coast woman told Yahoo Finance she “absolutely regrets” her university degree and has found she hasn’t actually used anything she learned in her professional life.
“I think I would have saved myself a lot of money and a lot of time by skipping the degree and just going to do an internship for a year,” she said.
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May started her own marketing agency in January and has been employed in marketing roles for the last five years.
She was very academic at school and got a 96 ATAR. But she felt like she was “pushed into uni” after graduating and was told not to “waste” her Year 12 result.
“At the time, that seemed like the right thing to do. But now, being in the creative field that I’m in, I was employed for five years at an agency but they never asked me to see a Bachelor’s degree or anything like that. So it’s not like I ever needed my degree,” May said.
“I was also in the Covid block for uni, so I think there’s obviously a huge effect that had on me because of Covid it was all online.
“So I feel like I’ve got a $38,000 HECS debt, it’s not that big anymore, but that’s what it was when I first finished my degree, to essentially just do a glorified online course.”
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May has her own marketing agency, Better Collective, and worked in agencies after she finished uni. (Source: Instagram/Better Collective/Abbie May)
May said it was hard for business degrees to keep up with the creative space and how fast-changing the world of social media has become.
It took her four years to complete her degree, as she worked while studying at McDonald’s and later at a gym.
Australians have now started receiving text messages and emails from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) advising them their HECS debt has been slashed.
About three million Australians will see their debts cut by 20 per cent, backdated to June 1. Around 1.5 million Australians have had their debt cut already, while the remaining 1.5 million will have it cut by next Thursday.
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Someone with the average student debt of $27,000 will see their debt lowered by $5,500. In total, $16 billion in student loans will be wiped.
May said she was looking forward to receiving the 20 per cent reduction. Her HECS debt is currently sitting at around $10,000 after years of working, with her repayments still a large amount each year.
Last financial year, for example, she had to make nearly $8,000 in HECS debt repayments at tax time.
“Now that I’m a sole trader, moving into a company, it’s taking still a huge toll out of my tax each year. That’s where it really comes to burn because I’m like, god, I’m still paying for this thing that I don’t know if I’ve ever referred back to anything,” she told Yahoo Finance.
May said her HECS debt was also a bit of a “ticking time bomb” when it came to wanting to take out a mortgage in the future.
“It feels like it kind of just pushes those goals further down the line as well,” she said.
May said her message wasn’t for people not to go to university. Rather, she would like to see more education around the different pathways available to people.
“The education around your pathways when you’re at that age definitely push you down this agenda of staying in the schooling system. There’s not enough options, not enough people preaching this message of there’s so many other career pathways for you,” she said.
While some jobs will require a university degree, like if you want to become a lawyer or a doctor, May said she didn’t believe a business degree was necessary for creative fields, social media or people wanting to go down the entrepreneurial path.
May said she was passionate abot internship programs and believes this can offer people a lot more experience, knowledge and skills than a degree.
She added that she still invests in courses to upskill, but these are between $3,000 and $5,000 each and she’s also found they are more relevant than her uni degree.
“How much time did I waste doing that as well? Is really what I think about. I was showing up and doing all these uni online courses and really it was just old traditional methods which didn’t kind of meet what I’m doing now anyway,” she said.
May also believes taking a gap year can be helpful instead of diving straight into university and can give you time to figure out what you want to do.
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