At the estimates (budget) hearing for Vote Tertiary Education yesterday there were some interesting exchanges. The ones around the lower than budgeted spend on skills training in Canterbury (despite the many offers/bids from training providers) has been well covered in the media.
We also quizzed Mr Joyce on the impact of abolishing student allowance for postrgraduate students and limiting eligibility on long courses. What this, and the written questions that we and the Greens have asked of him, show is the remarkable lack of knowledge about the impact of the policy. The best we can get is an approximation of the number of students who will be affected. No idea of the affect of the impact on particular groups such as women, nor any information on the reasons why people had extensions to the 200 week limit for allowances.
But the thing that really struck me about the answers Steven Joyce gave was when I asked him if it would have been fair to have “grandparented” all students currently enrolled in courses where they entered with the expectation of an allowance been available, so that they could finish the course under those conditions. After an ” I guess you could look at it that way”, we get a nod from Mr Joyce that he thought it was fair enough that those students would now not get an allowance.
Even if the government thinks cutting allowance eligibility is a good idea, I really think they could have looked at grandparenting everyone who is currently enrolled in a course where they would have got them. They are extending eligibility for some people (those with dependents) for a one year period. It would have been fair to have extended that.
Nothing is fair. Ever. What is fair to one person or group is unfair to another. The word is meaningless.
Don`t want to ever play in (or worse, against) your team, Nick
But do you think Joyce is actually being cunning (and unfair)? Very few NZers are, or will, be postgraduates. He is probably trying to portay them as a ‘spoiled minority’ and, sadly, encourage the ‘envious majority’ to National`s point of view. The best students will probably now study(and stay?) overseas…a huge loss to NZ`s future.
With little thought beyond the next election, the Nat`s will push any policy for cheap populist support. .
It is the measure of them … and that they are becoming slightly desperate?
I am being terribly cynical (increasingly hard not to be with ‘them’), but the real right wing of the party has plenty of dosh to educate ‘their`s’, so to hell with the less well off.. competition?… sorry, I sincerely hope that is over the top?
Joyce has no idea how many people will not be able to continue onto post graduate study or complete post graduate study as full-time students – this because the living cost amount will be at a lower rate than the allowance (this adds to those withdrawing from courses when they lose or cannot find part-time jobs).
All he knows is that the cost of keeping their promise not to place interest on tertiary loans is to met by those from families currently eligible for the student allowance help – and for some reason this does not concern him as much as reversing the cut in top rate of income tax or introducing a CGT.
I`d like Labour to speak out and say that they will commit to, once in government, reinstate student allowances for postgrad students.
I’d like them to speak out and say that they will commit to, once in government, to not giving knighthoods and/or cushy overseas postings for any of this current crop of ratbags on the top floor, including Mr Joyce.
You’re a tory, you’ll agree that not rewarding failure > bashing our dedicated post graduates.
it cuts across the sound policy objective of providing reasonable certainty to make investment decisions, grand parenting would have protected that for the incumbents, ensuring the current ‘property rights” of such students were not compromised.
One in our family battled through to his degree and is now on a postgraduate heading for a Masters and more. Once he turned 25 he became eligible for a Student Allowance after amassing $50,000 of Student Debt. Next year he will lose the Student Allowance thanks to Mr Joyce and be back on Student Loan. So much for planning and lack of fair warning.
I understand that many Post Graduate qualifications do not lead to a job afterwards. A Phd is not necessarily the answer.
They are too esoteric as a way not to find productive work
Fortran… surely you must think most advances in knowlege somewat ‘esoteric’ then?
Galileo had trouble getting employment -the church incacerated him?
You will barely find a top scientist without a PhD
Are you a flatearther? Ken Ring?
Fortran. For better or worse Universities employ no one unless they either have a Phd or are in the process of gaining one.
Grant, can you post your speech from Titirangi please?
Fortran , there is a difference between technical training and education. Michael Cullen has a PhD in History, Paul Reynolds has a PhD in Geology. They are educated: trained to assess information, to analyse to think, to communicate. There is no guaranteed that a top class academic training will get you a job. There is every guarantee that without more education we will all go backwards.
Opps I meant Grahame Sinclair