ASG: Education should be treated as a financial priority

31 August 2016

Research produced by the Australian Scholarships Group (ASG) has found most parents find a dedicated savings plan appealing but struggle to save for education citing factors including subdued wage growth and the rising cost of living.

The Repositioning Education as a Major Life Event white paper released by ASG this week, surveyed 1,000 Australian parents to understand their behaviours and attitudes towards education in comparison to other life events such as saving for a holiday, purchasing property, investing in retirement savings, getting married or having children.

The results show that while education is considered to be very important by families, there is a gap between this perceived importance and how families are planning, prioritising and saving for future education costs.

“Since ASG was established more than 40 years ago, we’ve consistently seen the cost of living, property prices and cost of education rise; at the same time, wage and salary growth has struggled to keep pace. This has increased the financial burden on Australians and their financial priorities have shifted as a result,” says John Velegrinis, CEO, ASG.

Mr Velegrinis said the ways the Federal Government can help support parents is to roll out a government co-contribution scheme to help them in saving for their children’s education like how government incentivises superannuation and retirement savings.