Kyle, I believe the issue with HECs and Vet Fee Help in relation to Aviation in particular is more in the people that decided that being a Pilot looks like fun, get into the course, go through it all, come out in massive amounts of debt at the end and then realise the hard yards that are required to get into that shiny jet job that pays a 6 figure salary.
Student Pilots coming through these "Academies" through places like GU are not being prepared for this, they are not being thoroughly warned about it. They're not told about the years they'll likely spend flying clapped out singles, the years they could potentially spend without work trying to get a job, let alone a first job! the years they'll spend away from home and often in remote locations. These are things that come with Aviation in general and take a certain type of person to be able to put up with them.
They're not really being told in any great details about how poor the pay scales are, how they'll be treated along the way by an unfortunate number of their Employers.
This isn't me saying "Aviation is terrible, get out whilst you still can!", I love it and wouldn't trade it in for anything but I'll tell you right now that in the short amount of time I've been in it I've gone through a lot of rather low periods, I've seen many of my good friends, people far more talented than I, go through the same, get beat down over and over again through either companies shutting down, slowing down or just the industry in general being slow and it really isn't something they put in the fancy brochures or expand upon during your training but it is often a reality.
Is it the Life we want in Australia? people working hard for their dreams and being dedicated to those dreams, having that dedication become more and more cemented and requiring a lot of very hard thought and decisions to be made before taking it on?
I wouldn't want to see people not being given the opportunity to achieve their dream or being disadvantaged just because of the life they were born into, but on the other end of the scale is giving it to people so easily that they never really think it through and just go for that "Dream". It sounds so wonderful to use that word but often Dreams have to give in to Reality, and often that happens when you're forced to take a reality check.
If you want a really worrying thought for the evening, go find the latest statistics showing those with Tertiary Education Qualifications that are broken down into how many of them are working full time in the Industry that their qualifications are actually for, now translate that over to Aviation (Take it with a giant grain of salt as the figures will be worse for Aviation IMHO) and then consider how many people are out there with close to or over $100,000 in debt to the Government that aren't even using those Qualifications. Consider that unlike other Degrees that cost a lot less, those people have hit their maximum amount they can borrow on the Government Schemes and then wonder how they'll ever manage to bounce back and get requalified in another Industry now that they have no other option but to pay it themselves out of their own pockets.
And yes, I know that everyone there is brimming with pride and expectations and hope for the future in that shiny jet, most of us were during training, it's afterwards that the cold hard reality hits and it's then you really need to pull the socks up and start actually working at it.
Always remembers that Universities are only Educational Organisations on the face of it, behind it all, they're a Business and Businesses don't exist to hand out free rides, they exist to make money and that money is based on getting people into their courses and that means marketing and marketing always means gilding the lily and putting the best foot forward which often means hiding the hard truths.