yes, i dont really beleive that when a university can raise tuition fees by up to 10% (as was the case with medical students last year) and 4-5% for other students for just one year that the government is slowing the fees. thats just rediculous. my fees have been raised by over 15% since i started uni five years ago at least. plus, it will take me until im at least 40 to pay my student loan back (im 21) – assuming that i dont have children or get a mortgate etc. fees is only part of the problem, the student loan scheme is the other.

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The Government does deserve credit for making loans interest-free during the time of study. It was outrageous that the NZ Government sought to actually make money from what it was lending students, and Labour’s interest write-off policy was a welcome reverse of this lunacy.

However, I’m not sure that Labour deserves credit for “slowing the rate of growth in tuition fees”. What you’re saying, Jordan, is that while tuition fees are now much higher than when Labour came into office (a NZUSA survey released early this year suggested the average tuition fees for a full-time students had increased by 61 percent – from $3,499 to $5,644 – between 1998 and 2004), students should be grateful because they would have increased by even more had National remained in office. Well, I guess there’s some logic to that: we’re going to keep screwing you for more each year, but you should be thankful because the other guy would be ratcheting your fees by even more than we are! All with a smiley face, of course….

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It may seem churlish to point this out, but the government _has_ significantly improved the lot of students, by slowing the rate of growth in tuition fees and by making loans interest free. In my own case, if both policies had been in place for my period of full time studey, my student loan would be around $15k smaller than it is – and I call that a bloody big difference.

It does, though, need to be better, and as Mallard acknowledges in his responses in Salient, the govt was not expecting this outcome. I look forward to a fuller analysis of the figures.

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