Universities have warned fees-free study could push some students to apply for courses they are unlikely to pass.
Tension between the sector and the Labour-led Government over the flagship scheme is revealed in letters sent to Education Minister Chris Hipkins, now released to the New Zealand Herald under the Official Information Act.
They include a warning universities will be forced to ask for hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra funding to help meet an administrative "burden" accompanying the policy.
Hipkins has flatly rejected any request for cash and saying the vast bulk of administration is done by the Tertiary Education Commission.
University of Auckland vice-chancellor Stuart McCutcheon wrote to Hipkins in December last year, in his capacity as chair of Universities NZ, the body that represents all eight universities, to warn of "a most unfortunate and no doubt unintended anomaly" of the fees-free policy.
Foundation courses are designed to help disadvantaged students, including Maori and Pacific New Zealanders, into degree programmes, and as such had much lower fees, McCutcheon wrote.
"Students who take a university foundation course will enjoy a fees remittance of as little as $700 in their first year of tertiary study ... by contrast, those entering directly into degree programmes will enjoy the benefit of up to $12,000 in remitted fees.
"We believe that this outcome is grossly inequitable … it will also create perverse incentives for students to seek entry to degree programmes for which they are not adequately prepared and in which they are unlikely to succeed without special preparation."
Labour's policy offers a free year of education or training to anyone who has done less than half a fulltime year of post-school education or training. The intention is to implement three fees-free years from 2024.
In a separate Universities NZ letter to Hipkins, also sent in December, McCutcheon said the decision not to run the new system through StudyLink had created "overheads for a system already under real financial pressure".
That included changing systems, increasing the size of call centres to handle increased inquiries and double-checking student eligibility.
Vice-Chancellors had asked staff to systematically identify and track all additional costs, McCutcheon told the Minister.
- By Nicholas Jones
