Government serves up waffle with condescension sauce

Prime Minister John Key has hinted at further overhaul to the student loan system, but is unlikely to reinstate interest for fear of reprisal by students “getting out of bed before 7 o’clock at night.”

Critic polled students on the various insurrectionary activities they could pursue by getting up before 7pm. Many responses were frankly alarming and unfit to be published. Even so, this has not deterred the National government from announcing that student loans would be reigned in “in a big way”.

The precise details of what this entails are yet to be unveiled. Labour Party Tertiary Education spokesperson Grant Robertson raised concerns that National’s next step might be to restrict the amount that students could borrow based on the courses they took and the employment prospects they had.

Tertiary Education Minister Steve Joyce said this was “not necessarily” the government’s preferred approach, but that “we want to as much as possible to give an indication to people when they make their decision on their tertiary education that they understand what they’re likely to earn coming out the other end, based on what people who get that degree or diploma are actually doing.”

In light of this, the government is about to publish the average income of graduates from certain courses as part of a pilot scheme involving two polytechs, the IRD and the Ministry of Education.

Tertiary Education Union President Sandra Grey points out, “It is hard to see how publishing yet more data that says for instance, airline pilots earn more, on average, than bus drivers is going to change the subject choices of secondary school students. New Zealand needs people choosing to be both bus drivers and pilots, for reasons other than pay sometimes.”
This article first appeared in Issue 4, 2012.
Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Charlotte Greenfield .