February 27, 2010 8:11am by David Farrar

Student Loans access

Tertiary students who fail more than half their courses may lose their student loans as the Government moves to crack down on abuse.

Only 50 per cent of domestic students who started studying for bachelor’s degrees in New Zealand in 2004 finished their degrees within five years – suggesting that up to half of the country’s 145,000 bachelor’s students will fail or drop out.

Student allowances are chopped if students failed more than half of their courses in the previous year, but there is no requirement to pass courses to keep getting student loans.

I can see this changing very soon. However I think one will want some ability to access loans if say a student drops out, enters the workforce, but a few years later wants to return to finish their degree.

Mr Joyce pointed to research showing 41.5 per cent of New Zealand’s tertiary education budget went into student loans and allowances, compared with an OECD average of only 17.6 per cent.

He told the Weekend Herald he wanted to shift funding to pay for more tuition places. “I’d like to see more money going into actually training EFTSs (equivalent fulltime students) and I’m looking around for opportunities to deliver that in 2011,” he said.

The budget will be interesting.