The federal government has rising university student fees in its sights for the next stage of its university debt overhaul, with a government source saying a one-off 20 per cent cut to debts is an interim measure.

Labor has made an election promise to wipe an average of $5,500 from existing student HECS debts and reduce the minimum amounts graduates must repay, as well as raise the income threshold at which mandatory repayments begin.

Yesterday Health Minister Mark Butler hinted there were more changes to come before the year's end.

"As Jason Clare has said, he's got a very substantial report in front of him, the Universities Accord Report that makes a series of recommendations about structural change to university fees," Mr Butler said.

"He hopes to be able to have something to say about that more general position towards the end of this year."

That report recommended establishing an independent pricing authority that could set course fees, which the government has indicated it will support.

It would overwrite the Morrison-era Job-Ready Graduates package, which set lower student contribution rates for degrees such as in education, nursing and mathematics and higher rates for arts and law degrees.

Simply undoing Morrison policy would push some course fees up

The federal government has already adopted some of the recommendations made by the Universities Accord panel, including by promising to reduce minimum HECS repayments and lifting the income threshold to $67,000.

The panel's recommendation to fund paid practical placements was also introduced in the federal budget this year.

But simply undoing the Morrison-era funding decisions would result in higher fees for teaching, nursing and several other courses.

Instead, the federal government wants to establish an Australian Tertiary Education Commission that the education minister says will set degree fees.

The interim 20 per cent cut, which would wipe about $16 billion worth of debt, was not a recommendation of the University Accord panel.

Expert says some students may never clear debts

Higher education expert Andrew Norton said a stopgap was needed because an independent pricing authority was probably two or three years away.

But he said there were better ways that could have been achieved.

"Really we need some more urgent measures around some courses. Arts is the obvious example where the annual fee will be nearly $17,000 next year, and the typical earnings of arts graduates mean they will probably never repay that," Professor Norton said.

"And [they're] even less likely to repay it after the increase in the first repayment threshold to $67,000.

"If they can find $10 or $12 billion for this 20 per cent cut, surely they could find a much smaller amount of money to do a quick fix on the arts student contribution issue."

The federal government says its package of HECS debt reforms and relief will cost the budget about half a billion dollars over the forward estimates.

Professor Norton said one-off debt relief was a sugar hit, and students beginning next year would "just go back to the same old underlying problem".

He said until that was addressed, there was a missing piece in the government's education strategy.

"The big problem is we haven't addressed the underlying reasons why some people accumulate large amounts of debt that they probably won't fully repay," Professor Norton said.

"To tackle this issue it needs to be done on the borrowing side first, rather than on the repayment side."

The architect of HECS, Bruce Chapman, agreed yesterday that the economics of a one-off debt cut did not stack up.

"The system wasn't designed for this level of a charge, so I can understand why a government would cut the overall debt … but I am hoping and expecting this is a temporary measure," Mr Chapman told ABC Radio National yesterday.

"The right way to charge HECS is the expectation of future lifetime incomes, and that's why people studying law or medical specialties should be charged the most and people studying humanities should be charged the least.

"We don't have that at the moment."

Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi said the Job Ready Graduates scheme should be scrapped, but the government had "dragged the chain".

"Since the Albanese government came to power, students have been suffering under rising student debts and arts degrees now cost $50,000," Senator Faruqi said.

"Anything to reduce the burden of fees and debt is a step forward but the HECS system is broken. The only real way to fix it is to wipe all student debt and make university and TAFE free, as it was when the prime minister studied."