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Monday, February 12, 2024

David Farrar: The Hipkins free fees disaster


The Herald summarises the impact of Hipkins' expensive first year free fees policy:

The Herald last year reported the number of decile 1 students in first-year tertiary study has halved since the policy started, with students from wealthier backgrounds making up an increasingly greater share.

Government data shows bachelors-level students made up two-thirds of fees-free enrolments. Most were aged 18 to 19 years. And most were European.

And the “parity gap” has increased, according to a summary on educational performance indicators, as the qualification completion rate fell for Māori and Pacific peoples in 2022.

He spent over a billion dollars, with the result being fewer students from poor areas attending tertiary education, and lower qualification completion rates.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.

3 comments:

Robert Arthur said...

Free fees or not far too many young persons have been encouraged to take courses for which they totally unsiuted. i know of a bloke of clearly below averge general ability conned into an expensive course of CAD. And a young single maori woman, with no hobby interest, conned into stdying elctronics. She had a baby instead. Both left witj a huge debt to be paid off from low skill casual work.
And the measurements should be corrected to exclude hobby qualifications like maori studies.
Our modern politicians are too far removed from normal life.Lobbyists and commercial interests carry the day.

Anonymous said...

the natural outcome of fees free has been excessive dumbing down of first year uni courses. the deans know that if the kids are scared off, they'll lose the revenue stream for the nest few years (when they'll be paying out of pocket or via loans). this means they rigor for remaining years has to go up, but the students are ill suited to tackle that. time to stop this nonsense!

Anonymous said...

You didn't have to be a genius to work out that the putting a carrot in front of a donkey technique works - giving the donkey the carrot then expecting it to work will never be successful.

Free fees for the last term of the course and a rebate on completion of the qualifications was far too obvious for our socialist spendthrift previous so called Government.