Loomio
Mon 27 Mar 2017 12:40AM

Tertiary Education Policy

DG Daymond Goulder-Horobin Public Seen by 13

From looking at the recent proposal I posted it seems that the majority of individuals believe that adding in an optional Loan Living costs on top of a Universal Student Allowance so that the student may chose either to work and study or take the extra loan to focus solely on study.

I believe that as we work on the budget and start constructing it that we may be able to offer a housing subsidy for students living alone or in flats, as Colin England Suggested since they are the ones fronting the rent costs, for example those studying in Auckland.

At the moment I have prioritized the needs as follows

  1. Universal Student Allowance - Take the pressure of students that need to work while studying. Without any attention to parental income.

  2. Loan Living costs on top - Give Students the option to borrow more so that can fully focus on study and not have to worry about work at all, at least during the semester of study. This can be explained more if necessary.

  3. Housing Subsidy - It is clear that students living alone or in a flat struggle to support themselves while those in a parental home should be OK (at least with USA). Therefore an additional entitlement could be put in place, different from the accommodation supplement or an expansion of it.

  4. 3 years free education - Eventually at some point we could hope to fully subsidize, support and nurture the education culture in New Zealand, as some would argue to the point where it rivals European countries. However I believe that this should be accounted for later on since in my view the sustainability of students during study is more important that improving welfare after study, (where we assume they will be able to find a job and improve there living standards anyway).

This is my view. Currently Labour wants to enact 3 years of free education first but I believe that it still means that students will struggle during study, they are also paying it with the expected growth in income of New Zealand which means they would be holding everything constant for the next 5 years and doing it instead of proposed tax cuts.

In essence once we breakdown the budget we can see how far we can or should go with improving equity in this sector. For instance perhaps we can fit the first two points and leave the subsidy for later on and so forth. I could also look into Primary/Secondary school education a bit later and gain a position on that but I want to just stick to one thing at a time.

Also just to mention, I don't hold a particular grudge towards Student loan debt and I treat it as an Investment that Students make, for instance mine is pretty high but I know that the current system of paying 12c in a dollar is manageable and I will have a higher quality of life after finishing study. (perhaps there is also room there to reduce payment thresholds and amounts to reduce burden) However I did have to work while studying which affect my focus a bit.

I've also attached the Raw proposal that was on the meetup

What are your thoughts? Do you think the priorities are setup correctly or should we be focused somewhere else?

EDIT: Have thought about making a work placement Compulsory to ensure that work experience is included in the education

CE

Colin England Fri 26 May 2017 11:39PM

The whims of the government determine policy, not scientific means of setting speed limits, analysis of crashes by road and drivers to focus enforcement efforts on areas that need improvement, but on politically "interesting" areas.

To a large degree that's only true because National are in power. Under the guidelines that existed before National's Roads of National Significance would never have been built because of the high benefit to cost ratio required.

That said, I believe that there's a valid case for the government to give direction but it would be a broad directive such as focussing on public transport but even that should have scientific backing.

I'm going to leave the rest of your ranting about the NZTA alone because it's off thread.

The general idea I have of cutting the education costs is to find ways to tie education into everything else. Since almost everyone goes to uni these days, treat it like a social service program. What can students contribute? Not as employees in their off-time, but in a manner consistent with the education they are seeking to cut costs and improve the country as a whole?

We used to have these things called apprenticeships which got people to learn on the job. I have a trade cert from the one I did for Telecom back when it was still government owned.

I have two points here:

  1. That people can provide service while getting their education
  2. That government service is a great way to build skills for the country

Instead of a CCO for Novopay I'd have a government department responsible for supplying all software that the government needs across all of it. This works as a centre for education, research for innovation and providing what the government needs specifically around software and possibly even computer hardware.

All of which can filter out into the private sector as it used to.

There are classroom assistants in my children's school. Why isn't a local education student from uni filling that task?

Because they don't have the education necessary to fulfil that role.

FW

Foster West Sun 18 Jun 2023 10:05PM

I think, it's a good idea.