Ryan Bridge: Will Labour's election bribe work?

It's not quite Briscoes sale level, but 10% off your student loan is not to be scoffed at.

Unless you're not a student, never had a student loan, and don't plan on sitting in a lecture theatre for three years.

Then you don't really care about this policy except for what it costs you as a taxpayer.

David Farrar: National does carrot and stick with student loans

Nicola Willis has announced some changes to the student loans scheme to reward those who stay in NZ and repay the loans, and targets those who go overseas and don’t. The changes are:

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Who feels sorry for the doctor arrested over student loan debt?

Right, hands up — who felt sorry for the doctor arrested at the border for not paying back his student loan?

So the details are: this chap owes almost $180,000. Yes, he admits he should have responded to IRD on the multiple occasions they tried to contact him — but he didn’t. And he says he didn’t realise how much money he owed until just recently.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Are IRD really the 'bad guys' when it comes to student debt?

Right, tell me what you think of this.

There seems to be a bit of an effort underway at the moment to portray IRD as bad guys because they're chasing Kiwis overseas who owe money on their student loans.

Now, tell me if you think that we should let either of these two off the hook on the money that they owe.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: We need to get serious about ensuring people pay back their student loans

Why has it taken us so long to get serious about forcing people to pay back their student loans?

Last month, IRD had someone arrested at the border. They have now paid back their loan.

Isn't that amazing?

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: I support the IRD's crackdown on student debt

Well, here’s some good news if you don't like the idea of people freeloading on other taxpayers - the IRD has finally started properly cracking down on people who don't want to pay back their student loans.

They have doubled the size of the team that chases Kiwis living overseas to pay the money back, they've got the debt collectors in Australia involved and when any of these people with debt over $1000 comes in, 100 percent of them can expect to hear from the IRD.

Point of Order: Loan rules rile Sri Lankan law student, who regards them as racist.......

........but why should Greg O’Connor apologise?

National MP Erica Stanford makes a good point, when she says new classrooms will sit empty if Labour keeps on failing to get kids to school and learning the basics.

Only half of the country’s kids are attending school regularly, she says (with disturbing truancy data high in her considerations, presumably).

She has tweeted her comments in a follow-up to the government’s announcement of plans to spend $400 million on new schools and classrooms. And she boldly pledges:

Mike Hosking: Higher education can't just be given away

Part of the reason we started student loans is before that it was all funded by the taxpayer.

So, like when anything is free, people just wandered off to university to see what it was all about, to see if there was anything they liked, and to just generally “discover themselves.“

That led to a tremendous number of people never completing anything, as they worked out tertiary study wasn’t for them. You are either on a path to university or you aren't.

Richard Epstein: Higher Education for All?

In my column, Beyond Austerity, I argued that the quickest path toward job creation in the short run lies in the deregulation of labor markets. Politics aside, it costs nothing for government to remove the barriers that block job creation. As jobs grow, increased tax revenues are paired with decreased welfare expenditures. That sets the stage for another round of labor market improvements.

It is, however, a mistake to assume that long-term growth depends solely on these short-term improvements. Over the long haul, it is equally critical to develop the human capital of the next generation that will allow young people to enter technological and professional fields that depend more on brain and less on brawn. Unfortunately, high returns from human capital first require large investments in human capital—hence, the thorny question of how best to finance higher education.

Mike Butler: Deficit reveals cost of bad govt

Fed up with Finance Minister Bill English’s “death by 1000 cuts” Budgets, and disgusted with the whole range of commentators who believe in either big or bigger government, I went to Treasury’s Budget appropriations to see by how much I could reduce the deficit. This is what I have found.

In his Budget speech, English blamed a recession that started in 2008, the global financial crisis, and the Canterbury earthquake for the difficulties he faces as finance minister. I suggest the real culprit is the long shadow of barmy policy of successive governments, including his government.

Roger Kerr: The Diabolical Student Loan Problem

The student loans scheme was introduced in 1992. It provided loans to tertiary students for tuition fees, and course-related and living costs. The loans were repayable (at the rate of 10 cents in the dollar) only when the borrower's income exceeded a threshold.

The scheme has become hugely politicised and concessional since then. During the 1999 election campaign the Labour Party promised to remove all interest charges while borrowers were in full-time study. In a more outrageous election bribe, the Labour Party promised in 2005, apparently against the objections of finance minister Michael Cullen, to make the loans interest-free over their entire life, provided the borrower resides in New Zealand.