LABOR plans to reverse the federal government's controversial plan to cut $2.2 billion which would see rural and regional Queenslanders miss out on higher educational opportunities.

Last December, the Federal Government announced plans to freezing funding at 2017 levels for two years, lower the threshold for repayment of HECS-HELP to $45,000 and capping student loans to $150,000 for medical and dentistry degrees and $104,000 for others.

Universities Australia chairwoman Margaret Gardener said the government's plan would hit the regional institutions and disadvantaged and widen the gap that currently has 42 per cent of people in capital cities are university educated, compared with 17-19 per cent in remote and regional areas.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham accusing the universities of scaremongering saying the freeze did not cap on student places that universities could offer and they could make up the funding shortfall "through efficiencies".

Although he couldn't say with certainty in advance of the next federal budget, Opposition leader Bill Shorten told The Morning Bulletin last week he planned on reversing some of the changes.

"There's no doubt that we've got to keep the cost of going to uni down," Mr Shorten said.

"Regional universities have been hard hit, I can say we'll reverse some of the cuts, we're going to change the direction.

"It says everything about Turnbull and his conservatives that they want to rip more than $2 billion from universities to help give multinationals and millionaires a tax cut."

Mr Shorten said he planned to make their full policy offering on universities completely clear well before the election

"Just like we did last time, but the fact is when it comes to education, you can only trust Labor," he said.

"One of the things we are doing for the young people in the region and their families is we're successfully opposing the increase in interest rate that the government wanted to levy on your HECS fee.

"We're successfully arguing in the senate that they shouldn't increase or lower the threshold when you have to start repaying uni debts."

Mr Shorten said he could make these promises about university funding because he "wasn't going ahead with the corporate tax cuts at the big end, the multinationals and the large companies".