That's what people say before every tight election. Polls said Hawke, Keating and Howard were all going to lose several respective elections during the 1990's in Australia [Edit: And they each ended up winning each election]. Winston Peters, and thus the entire electorate, thought that the election in 1996 would result in a victory for Labour (It resulted in a shitty alliance between NZ First and National that collapsed in a year). In 1992, the Alliance party was scoring double National's poll ratings (National won the 1993 elections). The Tories were going to loose under John Major during the mid 90s in the UK according to polls very close to the election, but due to a last ditch campaign, he managed to win. John Kerry was, when a large amount of polls were collated, was beating George Bush in polls before the US election. We all know the result of the last

I wouldn't put too much down to pre-election polling...

However, it's almost certain that NZ First and National combined would have enough votes for a coalition (unless the polls end up significantly different from the vote), and it's quite likely that they'd form such a government if necessary.

As unpleasant as the thought is, that's what I'd bet on.

AHAHAHAHA.


Anyone watching Campbell Live and pissing their pants over Bill English COMPLETELY reversing what he said about student loans at the last election?

Shit dude.

Bill English last election: We will cut student loans by 10% per year for 4 years. HUAR VOTE FOR NATIONAL.

Bill English this election: Labour cutting the interest on loans is irresponsible because student s will borrow more.

What the fuck.

Bill English: Tongue my smeggy flange.

It's pretty much bullshit, the whole political thing that is. I don't think anyone actually has any intention whatsoever of cutting student debt, reducing fees or making acces to money any easier for students. Just when elections come around, they starting running around in circles, yapping "debt, debt debt!!!" and offering pretty dubious solutions.
Labour have done fuck all since they've been in power
National want to give us a couple of bucks a week when we've left
Act just say "tax cuts!" which is not a real solution
NZFirst probably don't care cause theor only votes come from the senile
I imagine the Greens would have better policies, but I'm not too sure what they are, but they haven't been able to reduce debt while they've been in government either.
Fuck 'em all, I say

Labour removed interest on loans while you are studying actually. A policy they fulfilled from the election before last.

What other party has done anything?

Sounds pretty sweet to me. They just bought my vote from National.

True, can't complain about that. but someone needs to realy address the issue of 8 something billion dollars of debt. I'll still end up voting either Labour or Greens

Did, you watch all of Cambell Live Ahmed? Did anyone else?? :P

Labours cemented my vote with the complete interest write off.

Compared to the pittance that National is proposing for student loans

I didn't catch it I'm afraid but I heard good things about it ;)

ditto

Well, I don't have a loan, so that doesn't sway me personally. HOWEVER, as a general solution, cutting interest is much more profitable for us students.

I heard that there was someone great on Campbell Live.

...National and ACT are the Tory parties here.

And oob, your one vote is 1/4 000 000, but so is everyone else's. If everyone votes for who they think will benefit them most, then the Parliament that ensues will be representative of what the majority thinks is best for them. How many students are going to vote Labour now? Each of their vote is worth just as much as your.

if NZ was made up of 4 million oobs, all independent of one another, plus Brian Tamaki and his wife, Brian would be pm.

Fortunately that is a hypothetical situation, and in reality my non-voting has no effect whatsoever.

If someone can demonstrate some practical value to voting, other than the .0000001% (figure pulled out of ass) chance it has of changing the outcome of the election, feel free to state it, in case there's something I'm missing.

If you dont vote,

we might just have to set a lynch mob on u :ninja:

*shrugs* Just bribe him like I do. It's fun!

shhhh...

I think students should only take out loans if they know that the degree that they get will give them an income capable of repaying it. i.e. don't just bum around at uni, or don't just go to uni then bum around at home having kids.

How would that be enforced, Mrt?

How to prevent people from fucking about after their degree?

In an ideal world, the students should have *coughs* perfect knowledge *coughs* about the situation. I.e. know that doing a BA in, in say Archeology, won't ensure to a sufficient degree that they will end up in a job that is capable of providing a decent living as well as the ability to pay off the loan within a comfortable time period. Would you spend all your money on a car if you knew that at the end of 5 years the thing will be worthless and all your money gone?

- Inform students before enrolling that they can actually save up for the degree with their own money. Inform them that this is their right to exploit, not a privilege to pillage.

- Charging them student loan interest as a disincentive to taking up study that will give no benefit/result in insufficent monentary gain to justify the undertaking. If they're *that* passionate about the subject, then they can save their money up.

- Perhaps only start charging interest not earlier than 6 months after graduating in order to allow the students to find a decent job.

- Employement related interest relief (I don't know how exactly, I like the idea of no interest while working in NZ for the first 1/2/3 years, and I like the idea of getting some sort of interest credits for working part time while studying).

- Other interest related benefits, i.e. if you fund (random number:) 30% of the fees for the year (from say your part time job), then the loan for the other 70% will have lower interest or perhaps the government will grant 20% without interest and charge lower interest on the remainder.

All these ideas are focused towards productive people, not lazy bums wasting their arses and tax payer money figuring out what to do in their life.

I saw in the herald today about a guy who was in his 3rd year at UoA doing (science/arts? can't recall) and projected he would have to pay $80k by the time he had finished paying everything off. Well IIRC, my loan wasn't larger than ~$18k and was paid off after 3 years of part time working while studying and 1 year of full time employement in a degree related job. Perhaps he hasn't taken Financial Management 101 yet.

Subsidized/free financial advice from a professional wouldn't be a bad idea either. Or having the fee caps only set for those courses which are actually needed in the workplace, to discourage useless degrees.

I do agree with most of what you said. Just to emphasize on that 80K student loan. HOw does a person accumulate such a sum . How can the govt still allow him to borrow more. Thats a LOT of $$$. Like mrt, mine was a decent value. Unless you are doing Medicine or RnD related courses, you should not end up with anything over 20K (4yr , 8papers/year, $600 a pop). Now $600 is more than your average paper cost, also normal degree lasts for 3yrs so infact the $$ should be less than just 15K mark.
But .. IIRC a Science degree is 42points - 21papers = less than 13K

Now i've seen people with 30k + loans and i've also known the way they utilize their time/ $$, there is no body to blame but them. Offcourse i'm not including the living cost, But that should not have anything to do with your education cost. It just depends on the individual and how they manage it.

It isn't exactly easy to borrow tens of thousands of dollars each year for several years, in fact I imagine it's extremely difficult (considering the caps there are on living costs, and natural human limitations on the number of papers).

Not everyone wants to get Bsc's (many of which are actually fucking useless too), or bcoms. In many cases the degree you get is irrelevant to your future career path (my Dad has a BA in anthropology, and is now a human resources manager), and either way, a lot of employers want people for tasks totally unrelated to their major simply because having a degree shows a relatively high degree of intellectual capability.

Student Loans (borrowing) are not income tested. Student allowances on the other hand are. So it is extremely easy for you to borrow thousands of dollars (maybe not 10k/year... maybe for med? I don't know.), and the natural human limiation on the number of papers they can take per semester can be a small factor if they fail lots of papers and have to keep taking more papers (i.e. stretching a 3 year into 4, 5 years).

A few points:
- Yes, some Bsc/Bcom degrees are useless, and I don't think we should provide incentives to take them over more useful degrees/subjects (i.e. accounting vs astrophysics). Same applies to BA.
- If you don't want to get a Bsc/Bcom, and want to pursure something else which won't help you secure an income capable of sustaining a reasonable standard of living and at the same time allowing you to pay off your loan is a reasonably quick fashion, then there is nothing to stop you from using your own money.
- In fact, there is never anything stopping you from funding your education yourself. Even if it takes several years to save the money up.
- It is completely reasonable for the government to charge interest and expect that the interest should be paid back. They are not the only avenue of funding for your Uni degree. They merely seem like the easiest to the unconcerned student.

The employement market has changed since your and my Dad first went for a job. Back in the day, degrees weren't as important as they are now. Yes, you'll still find jobs that aren't specific on the degree requirement but as a percentage these kinds of jobs, from the professional services sector (laywer, accountant, programmer, etc...) are small.

Mrt, you're agreeing to what I said. You cannot get insane amounts of money directly into your own purse (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars), and thus I'm trying to say that moving further to the right from the current system (That is, weakening student loans so only rich students can go to university) would really not be beneficial, considering it's not exactly a bargain already for poor people going to uni.

Just like the millions of Maori that supposedly never work and watch Sky TV all day down in state houses in Otara, I think the myths about people ripping off the student loan system are generated from a handful of cases that naturally get turned into ideological pawns (or alternatively become easy illusory targets for people not content with paying tax and their way through society).

Exactly: there is nothing to stop you from using your own money, and I'm sure that a huge proportion of people in this situation have some form of paid employment. My degree in Spanish and Politics doesn't guarantee a stable future, but I'm working alongside it so that I can pay off my student loan more quickly, so I'm a case in point.

Nothing is stopping anyone, well, apart from a little thing called not being able to actually afford that, sure. Nothing is stopping people from eating cake all day. I could probably pay my student fees without a loan by working about 15 hours a week (roughly how much I do now), but I'd have an utterly shit lifestyle, and I'd rather have a larger debt later than have to walk to and from university every single day, never eat anything apart from plain rice, never be able to go to bars and not use the internet.

Philosophically and economically speaking, do you really believe that it's reasonable that the government charges interest on student loans in cases where people can't easily afford it? I think that Labour's compromise of sorts here is brilliant, in that they're killing two birds with one stone: one, this is a direct way of slowing private debt growth and two, of retaining highly skilled New Zealanders (as you wont have to pay interest as long as you remain in New Zealand).

From an economic point of view, state debt up to a point is nearly always better for the economy than private debt. State debt in economies like New Zealand does not weaken consumer consumption, it barely affects job growth here and additionally does not cause skyrocketing deflation. Indeed, if you have responsible left wing/centrist government state debt quite often acts as an incentive to make public services more efficient with greater value for money, without actually selling them off.

Naturally, I'm not promoting the idea that the state intervene every time debts are incurred to the individual, but specifically with things like health and education in New Zealand, it's in my opinion ALWAYS better for the government to intervene if the user is going to incur debt to pay for the services (Why income tested student loans would be a very good thing). Thus, charging interest in a blanket manner strikes me as very unfair. People with the ability to pay more in society are morally obligated to indirectly pay for the money 'lost' due the loans by the government through taxation.

The only problem here is that students actually have to get off their arses and work for the money to pay for more of their education. See my suggestion about the government paying for a portion of the degree if you pay (which they already do in a way), and rewarding those who work while studying by reducing their fees/interest. This wouldn't benefit rich people, but would benefit non-lazy people.

Bar the exaggerated lifestyle, this is exactly what should happen. You don't have the right to live a life of luxury from day one, you have to earn it. At the moment people don't seem to be able to handle their student debt (or perhaps all the $6 billion is from current and extremely recent grads?), so I don't see why we should provide it without proper incentives (rate reduction for working/paying some on your own) and disincentives (interest while not working/repaying).

You may prefer to have a larger student debt later, and that's perfectly fine, as long as you're prepared to face the consequences for what it entails. i.e. actually paying the money back.

If they can't afford it now, what makes you think they'll be able to afford it later? (Hence my suggestion that loans have different policies based on how useful the degree is *expected* to be).

I believe it is reasonable for the government to expect people to be responsible for their finances. And I think it is reasonable for the government to encourage other ways of financing how people go to Uni.

I have no problem with a poor person, who can't afford uni in any other way but loans and allowances, to take out a loan and get a degree that will help him out of poverty. I do have a problem with people using that money to fund something that won't have a decent chance at reducing/removing them from poverty.

It still encourages dumbasses to take up degrees that will only make them poorer in the end. I say dumbasses because I believe that the impacts of student loans isn't probably comprehended by some people.

Totally with you there (assuming the second sentence was also in the unfair tone).

Thats very offensive and most certainly not true. I cant believe you said that.

Its more like hundreds of thousands.

Oh goody. More rich-bashing.

I'd like to point out massive flaws with your logic;

A BA and a BComm/Llb conjoint are different in workload, and it simply might not be possible to work while studying.

Some degrees have paid work experience as part of their completion criteria. This would mean that students such as Engineers would effectively be given a subsidy towards their degree.

Your scheme only seems to work for the duration of someone's degree.

I am getting really sick of everyone bashing the 'rich'. The average wage in this country is so pathetic that a lot people are classed as 'rich'. We only have about 2000 income earners who live in opulence in this country, and I think you'll find that with costs of living the way they are, most of these people you would consider statistically 'rich' are actually just sneaking above adequecy.

Mrt, I actually basically agree with the whole thrust of what you're saying about having different loan policies (as Sloanie just pointed out with all the differences) for different degrees.
Nevertheless, you are sort of missing the actual ideal of trying to have as many people having tertiary education as possible. You might think this sounds economically ridiculous, but it actually allows a much greater exposure of sometimes untapped human resources among groups of people who don't normally get a higher education and fosters a much more educated and probably more entrepreneurial society.

This is where Paulo Friere comes in too, and the whole idea of 'conscientização'/conscious awakening, in that poor people who do menial jobs without access to a real education lack an underlying critical mentality toward their existing circumstances that all who get a proper education have.

The world needs ditch diggers too, however I've always felt it to be a pity that society rewards ambition more than talent.

I call bullshit on that argument. I know people taking a LLB/BSc who hold down part time jobs of 7-8 hours a week. The point is not to provide all the funds for studying from your work but to have an encouragement to avoid falling into the student loan debt problem. Also see my other idea about no interest while working after graduation.

Correct. This is great. It encourages people to work in an area that relates to their degree, which I fully support. I see absolutely no problem in this.

One of my ideas works for the duration of the degree (government partially matching what you pay for your degree from your working income).

The other of my ideas, that you should have reduced/no interest while working after graduation, handles the other "duration", the working in real life part.

I don't bash the rich, so I'm kinda perplexed about this statement. But anyhew...

So why then are people complaining about a $6B debt? Are these graduates going out and starting businesses and failing so they can't pay back the money? Or are they succeding but not profitably enough to sustain student loan repayments? Or are they sitting on their butts and going for lazy jobs? Or are they just holding out in hopes the govt will clean their slate.

I firmly believe that in compulsary education (in particular, the high school years) should attempt to inform students about life in a way that shows them what a higher education can offer.

But I still don't think the government should be forking out for wasted degrees. If a student goes to Uni and comes out with a loan and after a few years can't find a way to pay it back, then the knowledge that they obtained from the degree, combined with how society operated at the time, was insufficient to give them a decent lifestyle. It's not only an economic waste, but probably a waste of the persons time, and may very well depress the person as they think they've failed.

Bump!

Who else hasn't voted? It'll be interesting to compare this with the final results on Saturday night.

This is just as biased as that Trademe poll. This is a forum full of lefties (excluding me, at least), of course they'll poll Labour.

Strangely, ACT's polling is way too large here as well.

Students tend to be more 'radical' and Act on Campus claims to better organized than the other political groups. Maybe it's also their Simpson factor.