What a Commonwealth Supported Place is

A Commonwealth Supported Place (CSP) is a place at a public university where the Australian Government pays part of your tuition direct to the university. The amount you owe is called the student contribution, and it is much smaller than the full course fee.

How the subsidy is set

The Department of Education sets the student contribution band for every unit based on its broad discipline. The 2024 bands are:

• Band 1 (lowest): teaching, nursing, English, languages, agriculture, clinical psychology.
• Band 2: maths, statistics, science, engineering, allied health, IT.
• Band 3: medicine, dentistry, veterinary science.
• Band 4 (highest): law, accounting, administration, economics, commerce, communications, society and culture, humanities.

The band determines the student contribution per unit. The Government covers the difference between that and the university's published total tuition cost for the unit.

The bands have moved over time. The 2020 Job-Ready Graduates package shifted humanities and law to the top band while moving teaching, nursing and English to the lowest band, to reweight student contributions towards courses with what the package describes as "national priority" labour-market outcomes.

Eligibility

To be Commonwealth-supported you must:

• Be an Australian citizen, an eligible permanent humanitarian visa holder, or a New Zealand citizen meeting the long-term residency rules.
• Be enrolled at an Australian public university or one of a small number of approved non-university providers.
• Meet the up-front student-contribution payment rules at census date, or use HECS-HELP to defer the payment.

International students are not eligible for a CSP. They pay full international tuition fees.

How HECS-HELP fits in

If you have a CSP and you cannot pay the student contribution up front, you can apply for HECS-HELP at enrolment. The Government pays the contribution direct to your university on your behalf and adds the same amount to your HELP debt.

See our HECS-HELP explainer for the repayment mechanics.

The information here is general and explanatory only.