Fixing the System: Higher Education Reform, Student Debt and What Comes Next

Recorded on the 28th of July 2026

Earlier this year, Bill Shorten, the former federal minister now leading the University of Canberra as its Vice-Chancellor, stood up at the National Press Club and put a genuinely new idea on the table:

A sovereign wealth fund for education, paid for by a levy on company profits, to take the rising cost of a degree off students.

It broke open a debate that had stalled for years, and it got the sector's attention.