Hence news that the fees-free university scheme is about to be scrapped will be a cause of anxiety for many.
Fees free was a desperate shy at the stumps by the Labour Party during the 2017 election campaign. Facing being run out by National again its brains trust came up with a policy with enormous appeal to young voters and middle class parents — demographics it badly needed to vote to have any hope of getting in to office.
It proved enormously popular and after Labour agreed a coalition deal with New Zealand First that party’s votes helped implement it — albeit only for the first year of study. The original intention of extending the scheme to subsequent years was never achieved.
When Labour was defeated in 2023 the new National-led coalition reversed the presumption of the scheme: rather than being a helping hand to go to university, the grant was moved to the last year of study to ensure young learners completed their degrees. Either option had its merits, although arguably getting someone into a classroom at all was the most important part of the equation.
Now the government, again thanks to NZ First’s votes, is apparently going to scrap the scheme entirely.
The government believes that the scheme has not operated as intended, which was to open up the world of learning offered by universities to young people who for reasons of cost might not have considered that option.
It almost certainly has had that effect for some but, like all universally available benefits, it has also meant that some students who did not need that assistance have benefitted from it.
Some might think that would be a small price to pay for another much-needed doctor, engineer, teacher or scientist . . . but others might argue that there was no need to encourage another commerce or accountancy graduate.
While Dunedin is a university town, it also has an efficient, high-performing and well-regarded polytechnic.
The vocational training sector has been a battleground in recent years, the former Labour-led government creating the mega-merger polytechnic Te Pukenga, and just about as soon as the ink was dry on that transition the current government setting about scrapping it.
While the government has not been forthcoming about what will replace the free fees scheme — understandably so, seeing as it is Budget sensitive — there have been broad hints that some kind of trades-focused programme will replace it.
Not only polytechnics but also businesses which rely on a steady stream of well-trained tradespeople will be watching closely to see what May 28’s Budget reveals.
Speaking of Budget sensitivity, there are questions to be answered about just how this news emerged.
In the past the entire Budget was a closely guarded secret, its details only becoming public when the Minister of Finance read out the relevant passages in Parliament.
More recently governments wanting more PR bang for their Budget buck have made a succession of ‘‘pre-Budget announcements’’ before the big day. There have been few of these this year, perhaps underlining Ms Willis’ determination that this not be a lollyscramble Budget.
News of the end of free fees is no small announcement to be casually tossed out as a one-liner by a senior minister — as it was by NZ First’s leader Winston Peters in a radio interview on Friday afternoon.
If a backbencher had revealed such big news, they would have likely been hauled over the coals. Notwithstanding that being leader of a coalition partner means that Mr Peters is in a category all of his own, the lack of dudgeon from other coalition leaders — Prime Minister Christopher Luxon shrugged the issue off when asked about it yesterday — perhaps suggests that they were not unsurprised that this secret slipped out.
That is an issue which should not be allowed to slide away: Budget secrecy matters.
But the bigger picture is what better ideas than fees free, if any, the government has to encourage young people into higher education?
