[vacri]

A couple of things for perspective. Here in Australia HELP (it used to be HECS) is a government student loan that you pay back as you earn later in life. You can pay your course fees upfront instead if you like, but either way the amount is not onerous for a basic degree, and it's basically a few percent extra on your income tax until it's paid off (if your wage exceeds $X)

The other is that housing in Australia has gone berserk in price. We have the most expensive housing relative to average income in the developed world, except for Hong Kong. That's happened in only the past 10 years. What was a $200k house then is now a $500-600k house, and wages have not grown to match. Buying a house now is not a good investment. Buying a house back then was a good investment, with the benefit of hindsight.

[robryan]

Depends on location, there is probably still money to be made in property. Melbourne of instance probably now has very little undeveloped land within 10km of the CBD, even 20kms is mostly filled in. The population is still rising quickly and lots want to live inner city. So I don't see those prices crashing any time soon.

Granted it is a little like Apple shares, as expected high future demand would be built into the prices.

HECS is such a better system that what you read about US student loans that I wonder why they don't have similar. HECS doesn't touch your wage until you earn around 50k and even then only takes a small percentage. No one feels like they are taking a big financial risk here undertaking higher education.