Student fees 7th-highest in OECD
Australian and US universities cost more, data shows
New Zealand tertiary students are paying the seventh-highest fees in the developed world. The latest annual education update by the 35-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that Kiwi bachelor’s degree students in public institutions paid average fees of US$4295 a year in 2015-16, or $5927 at today’s exchange rate.
In NZ dollars, that was less than in the United States ($11,319), Australia ($6573) and four other countries.
But New Zealanders paid more than students in the other 20 countries for which data was available, including nine with no fees.
The report comes as Labour campaigns on a platform of scrapping fees for a lifetime entitlement of three years of tertiary education by 2024, starting with one year free next year.
The data shows taxpayers provided only 51 per cent of tertiary institutions’ income in 2014 — higher than in the US (35 per cent) and Australia (39) but well below the average of 70 per cent for all 35 OECD nations.
Universities NZ director Chris Whelan said this was partly because New Zealand had the second-highest proportion of international students — 21 per cent of all tertiary students, compared with 16 per cent in Australia and an OECD average of just 6 per cent. Only tiny Luxembourg had proportionately more international students (46 per cent).
But domestic students also paid a relatively high share of the costs of their tertiary education.
“We might think tertiary education is free if there are no fees, rather than the actual cost of $6000 paid by the student and $11,500 by the taxpayer,” Whelan said. “It’s not actually free.”
On other measures in the report, New Zealand’s performance is mixed.
Spending
Public spending on education through taxes, at 4.7 per cent of the national income, is the 10th-highest among the 35 nations.
Private spending, at 1.7 per cent of national income, is the fifth-highest, and the combined total of 6.4 per cent is higher than all other countries except Britain (6.6 per cent) and Denmark (6.5). The high private spending is partly because of our high numbers of fee-paying foreigners.
Public spending is about the same as the OECD average on primary schooling (1.5 per cent of national income), and slightly above-average on secondary schooling (2.4) but slightly below-average on tertiary education (0.9).
Early childhood
Almost twice as many 2-year-olds are in preschool education (65 per cent) as across the OECD (39), although the numbers range widely from none in Ireland to 95 per cent in Iceland partly because of definitional differences.
Preschool enrolments are also above average for 3-year-olds (89 per cent) and 4-year-olds (94), and substantially above Australia at all ages.
New Zealand taxpayers fund 81 per cent of the cost of early childhood education, about the same as the OECD average (82 per cent) and much more than in Australia (67 per cent).
Teacher ratios
Ratios of teachers to students are almost identical to both Australia and the OECD averages in both primary schools (1:16) and secondary (1:14).
Teacher pay
Primary teachers after 15 years’ service earned almost exactly the same in 2015 ($59,259 at today’s exchange rate) as the OECD average ($59,152), but much less than in Australia ($81,918). Australian teachers are the fifth-highest-paid in the OECD.
The transtasman pay gap is due to much higher incomes in Australia generally. Primary teachers’ actual incomes averaged 86 per cent of the average income of all tertiaryeducated full-time workers in New Zealand, virtually the same as in Australia (87 per cent) and the OECD average (85 per cent).
Teacher demographics
New Zealand teachers are the thirdoldest in the OECD with 36 per cent aged 50 or over compared with the OECD average of 30 per cent.
The proportions of female teachers are about the same as the OECD average across all sectors: 98 per cent female in preschool education, 84 in primary schools, 66 in lower secondary school, 60 in upper secondary and 49 per cent in tertiary.
Tertiary subjects
The most popular subjects for tertiary graduates are business, administration and law, a group that accounts for 25 per cent of New Zealand graduates and 24 per cent across the OECD.
New Zealand is first-equal with Finland in our share of graduates in information and communication technologies (7 per cent), but thirdlowest in engineering, manufacturing and construction (8 per cent), which Whelan attributes to our relatively “agrarian and service-oriented” economy. Student choices for other subjects are similar to the OECD average.
Educated workforce
Last year 43 per cent of New Zealanders aged 25 to 34 had tertiary qualifications, identical to the OECD average but below Australia (49).
Kiwis aged 25 to 34 with every level of education were more likely to be employed than in Australia or the OECD, but the income advantage from completing tertiary education was only 40 per cent above highschool graduates in Australia and New Zealand compared with the OECD average premium of 56 per cent.