The student movement has focused a significant amount of its activism and campaigning on fees following the fourth Labour Government’s introduction of a $1250 flat tuition fee in 1990. Since then, students have increasingly borne more of the cost towards public tertiary education in New Zealand, amounting to nothing short of the increased privatisation of our public tertiary education system.

NZUSA is fighting for a universal, free, publicly funded and high quality tertiary education system at every level. We believe that public tertiary education is a fundamental right and must be fully funded by the government through taxation revenue to ensure it is barrier free and that there is equal access to as many people as possible.

User-pays public education, and the notion that the student is a consumer and education a product, fails to acknowledge and recognise the social, cultural and economic advantages that a society gains when a large majority of its citizens have open and free access to public tertiary education.

In NZUSA’s view, any system of up-front or deferred payment tuition costs:

- Falsely assumes that all students will enter high income employment as a result

  of their education;

- Perpetuates and may exacerbate existing inequalities of access;
- Constitutes a dereliction of duty by government;
- Erodes the net value of income support for students and will lead to greater reliance

  on working during term time, parental support and commercial credit facilities;
- Constitutes a breach of New Zealand’s international legal obligations under the

  United Nations covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural

  Rights;
- Leads to high levels of debt for those students unable to meet high up-front fees and 

  who are forced into high levels of debt; and
- Fails to recognise debt aversion, particularly those from lower socio-economic

  and/or diverse cultural backgrounds.

 

Total collective debt owed to the New Zealand Student Loan Scheme currently sits above $8 billion and continues to grow, with 60 percent having been borrowed to pay for fees. In 2005 alone, $608.9 million was borrowed from the loan scheme for fees so that students could enrol. More alarming is that since 2000 a whopping $3.4 billion has been borrowed from the loan scheme by students to pay for fees.

Fully government funded public tertiary education is possible. Its return in New Zealand is only a matter of political will. A number of countries around the world continue a long tradition of a free public tertiary education system, while others are very close to having a fully funded system. Free higher education in Finland is a constitutionally protected right. New Zealand’s fees, however, are unusually high and are an absolute social injustice that have led to large and increasing levels of student debt and exclusion of many people from public tertiary education in New Zealand.

 

A short history of fees in New Zealand

 

Until 1989, fees for domestic students in New Zealand were very low. In 1989, the fee for full-time full-year study at a New Zealand university was less than $300. However, for most students, 90% of that cost was met by the government through a fees grant, which was paid through the student support system.

 

Labour introduced the flat $1250 standard tertiary fee for full-time and full-year students in 1990. Phil Goff, currently a Labour Cabinet Minister and the then Associate Minister of Education, responsible for tertiary education, was responsible for introducing tertiary fees.

 

The incoming National Government abolished the $1250 flat tuition fee in the 1991 Budget, however allowed tertiary institutions to set their own fees without any government regulation. Most institutions introduced their own flat tuition fee, however over time they introduced differentiated fees for different subject disciplines and levels of study.

 

In the 1990s, fees rose by an average of 13% per year. The EFTS-based “bums on seats” funding model was also introduced in the 1991 Budget. As the rate of funding per student decreased, tertiary institutions sort to recover funding decreases by increasing their fee levels. In 2004, economists Scott & Scott reported that funding to universities per domestic equivalent full-time student (EFTS) fell by 34.76% (in 2002 prices) from $11,293 in 1980 to $7,367 in 2002. Between 1991 and 2002, EFTS funding fell by 73 percent of university total operating revenue to 42 percent.

 

Fees have continued to rise in recent years apart from the Labour-Alliance Government’s fee freeze for 2001, 2002 and 2003. Fee rises have been back on the cards for most students following the government introducing the Fee and Course Costs Maxima (FCCM) Policy in the 2003 Budget. Fee maxima levels were announced for 2004, 2005 and 2006, and fee maxima levels for 2007 were announced in the 2006 Budget.

 

Although the government claims that the fee maxima policy is about maintaining affordable tertiary education, this is far from the case when the policy has resulted in fee increases. The maxima levels announced in the 2003 Budget were all set significantly above the 2003 average fee levels, and the maxima levels for 2007 are 2.5% higher than the 2006 levels.

 

Under the fee maxima policy tertiary institutions are able to increase fee levels, and most have, by as much as 5% (the Annual Fee Movement Limit) towards the relevant maxima. However, some tertiary institutions have applied to the Tertiary Education Commission for exemptions to the 5% AFML and this has resulted in 10% fee increases for a number of students at a number of institutions.

The 2004 Income and Expenditure Survey revealed that 79% of students agree that fees are too high, while two thirds believe that public tertiary education should be fully funded. However, the fee maxima policy has failed to address and recognise student opposition to the current fees regime.

 

Helen Clark said in November 1999, the month she was elected Prime Minister, that “tertiary fee rises are crippling our future”. She went onto state, “Labour is committed to first stabilising and then lowering tertiary fees. We want to do that because Labour believes that nothing makes a greater contribution to the equality of opportunity than education.”

 

NZUSA and students all around the country have an expectation that Labour will keep its promise of lowering fees. Bringing down the cost and removing user pays in public tertiary education will benefit the whole community by encouraging people into tertiary education and keeping them out of high levels of student debt.