Tertiary education

YOUR editorial ‘‘Labour’s unwise tertiary sweetener’’ (16.9.17) missed a few key points. More jobs need tertiary level education or training. By 2020, it is estimated twothirds of jobs will require qualifications above high school level. We need more apprentices, people with specialist industry certifications and more university graduates.

That’s why it’s perplexing that we have gone backwards in the provision of postschool education and training. Government investment in tertiary education and training has fallen, and so has participation. In 2010, 40% of 18 to 24yearolds were in tertiary education or training, but by 2015 (the latest data) that had dropped to 35%.

Labour wants to extend free education to take account of the rapidlychanging nature of work, to make sure every person who wants to, can attend postsecondary education. The first year will be free from 2018, but years two and three will be added in subsequent parliamentary terms. Some students may choose to squander their opportunity, so we have said that students will only be able to access years two and three if they have passed more than half of their papers.

Cost remains a major barrier to postschool education. The cost barrier comprises both fees, which are up over 40% since 2008, and rising living costs such as rent. Sixtyfive percent of parents list cost as a reason young people do not go into postschool learning.

Those who will gain access to education for the first time will typically be talented people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. They currently miss out because research tells us they are more debtaverse than those whose families are better off. Locking out the less welloff from postschool education impedes social mobility and means social barriers are further entrenched. Unfortunately, it also means many of our best and brightest don’t get to make their best contribution in life.

Excluding people from further education who can’t afford it holds economic growth back too. Those who don’t upskill end up contributing less to the public purse to support infrastructure, health and education for the next generation. It is both socially and economically crazy to make tertiary education inaccessible. Locally, we will benefit significantly from Labour’s policy. Labour’s free postsecondary policy is conservatively estimated to be worth $269 million each year to the Dunedin economy when fully implemented. David Clark Dunedin North MP

THE editorial (ODT, 16.9.17) declaring Labour’s plan for three years’ free study at tertiary level ‘‘unwise’’ is uninformed and illconsidered. We no longer live in a world in which a 15yearold school leaver can walk into a job and have a reasonable expectation of staying there, doing pretty much the same thing, for the rest of their working life. Tertiary education (whether through apprenticeship, polytech, wananga or university) is a way to open up a person’s options. This may be in their young adulthood or later, when retraining or upskilling.

Your editorial writer argues that free tertiary study advantages the middle classes. Has it occurred to them part of the reason why the middle classes dominate at university currently is that people who are used to struggling to pay their household bills are less likely to feel ready to take on a large personal debt for an uncertain future gain? And we have to remember that not all tertiary study is rewarded with high future earnings. Nurses, teachers and social workers don’t tend to live in mansions or drive flash cars, after all.

The argument that making a change is unfair to people who have already incurred student debt is shallow thinking. This could apply to any new community support. Was it unfair to previous generations when the first state houses were built? When State Advances helped people to raise deposits to buy their own homes in the ’60s? Of course not. Was it unfair to people whose children were grown when Working for Families was introduced? Don’t be daft.

This country has provided free university education to previous generations, and supported them with student allowances. Labour’s current proposal is a lot fairer than that previous system, as it makes no distinction between different kinds of tertiary study.

Suzanne Robins Dunedin [Abridged]