We have harped on about the need to get rid of that policy for so long that it actually started to get boring, even for me.
But as with everything: persevere and you will succeed. And finally, the policy is gone. We had it confirmed by Winston Peters on Friday.
Now, I’ve already had emails from people who are upset about this. I’ve heard students complaining and I’ve heard some parents complaining as well. And I understand - it is never fun to have free Government money taken away from you. It is because of this kind of angst that free Government money is so rarely clawed back once it’s started being handed out.
But this policy was a dog from the start. It cost perhaps $350 million a year - and $350 million a year is a lot of money. For that money, it didn’t do what it was supposed to do, which was to lift enrolments among poorer kids.
If it didn’t achieve that - if those kids were going to uni anyway and are still going - then all we were doing was wasting $350 million.
And to those worrying about students living in poverty or being unable to afford study, please remember: we taxpayers already subsidise about 70 percent of what it costs Kiwi kids to go to university. We already provide interest-free student loans.
It is already relatively cheap, by global standards, to go to university here.
You could argue that our system is already so generous that even making it more generous didn’t lift enrolments. It’s already generous enough.
Now, I am going to withhold judgment on Nicola and Winston and what the plan is from here because this Government does tend to save money only to spend it again.
They’re going to take some of that money and spend it on trades training. That might be a good idea - but then again, it might just be the same kind of slop as fees-free, only in a more worthy place. We’ll see.
But as for the cutting of Jacinda’s wasteful and pointless free year of study - RIP. And may we'll be more careful with our spending in the future.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
I appreciate that the official justification for the Ardern Government's fees-free policy was to lift enrolments among poorer kids. But the handout wasn't means-tested - it was available to rich-listers' offspring as well. Let's see it for what it really was - a buying of votes from the few youngsters who weren't already left-leaning (probably the rich-listers' offspring).
Like the free lunch program, the Ardern government was all about freebies to buy votes. There’s no justification in a country like NZ to use debt & tax increases on poorly targeted benefits for all.
Heather, university these days is really straightforward. You get out of bed, you go to class , you pay attention, and you study for maybe one hour per day. Students who fail do none of the above. Providing all materials online, which university managers basically compel lecturers to do, simply means that only 20-30% attend class in person. Those who rarely attend also rarely watch the podcasted lectures--until a day or two before an online test, with no incentive to not cheat. Ask any university lecturer in NZ. And taxpayers subsidize university students and their behavior.
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