Fees-free retraining tipped

Targeted tertiary scheme could be a Budget highlight

A targeted fees-free tertiary training scheme for people who have lost their jobs due to Covid-19 is being tipped as a possible highlight of today’s Budget.

The current fees-free scheme, which gives people one year of free study fulltime or two years in an apprenticeship or industry training, was originally planned to extend to two years from 2022 and to three years from 2025.

But those extensions were in doubt before Covid hit because the free tuition failed to boost student numbers.

Universities and polytechnics expect the Budget’s retraining package will also include streamlined processes to fund courses that are shorter than traditional degrees and diplomas, aimed at helping people add extra skills.

Ten former pilots, air traffic controllers, technicians and other people with strong technical backgrounds and at least three years of work experience jumped straight into the second year of an engineering honours degree at Canterbury University this week under a special “fast-track” programme seen as a model of what is needed nationally.

Canterbury engineering school academic dean Shayne Gooch said he started the course after he was approached by a pilot who had lost his job.

“Three-quarters of the interest we got was from the aviation industry,” he said. “These are people with the technical interest. A lot of them may not have done maths to the right level at school, but what we have set up is an introductory maths and then they go into first-year maths, so it’s an easier pathway.”

Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) is also working with Air New Zealand and the E tu¯ union to retrain former aircrew staff for roles such as construction project management and in healthcare.

But current settings make it hard for mid-career people who lose their jobs to return to study. An MIT nursing student faces fees of $6300 and a Canterbury engineering honours student $7798 a year, and the fees-free scheme is not available to anyone who has already done more than six months of fulltime tertiary study.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins told TVNZ’s Q+A this week that the existing one-year fees-free scheme would continue and added: “You will see a bit more about the decisions that we have made in that direction in the Budget.”

MIT chief executive Gus Gilmore told the Herald the Government “needs to look at opening up its fees-free programme more widely”.

Universities NZ chief executive Chris Whelan said about 60 per cent of students work part-time while studying in normal years, earning $6000 to $9000 a year.

But many of those part-time jobs have gone.

“For quite a small amount of money, $6000 to $9000 a year, it would be a tragedy to see them going on to the dole and giving up studies.”