Student loan savings

Stuff reports:

The Government has squeezed hundreds of millions of dollars in savings from the student loan scheme through a series of changes.

Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce and Revenue Minister Peter Dunne today announced the write-off on student loans had fallen to 39 cents in every dollar borrowed.

It had been about 48 cents in every dollar when the former Labour-led Government took interest off student loans, Joyce said.

”When we came into government, we committed to get that cost down and initially targeted getting it under 40 cents in the dollar,” Joyce said.

“I’m pleased to be able to say that changes over the past three budgets have helped reduce that cost from 48 cents to 39 cents in the dollar so far. 

That’s good At 48% write-off, the loans scheme was approaching becoming an ATM scheme. The idea of having loans is that they get repaid. It costs the Government money to borrow, to loan it in turn.

Hopefully over time the proportion written off will fall below a third.