Students fight hardship of capped loans

Juno Pyun has one year to go before graduating as a doctor but the Christchurch student will have to find at least $15,000 to do so.

A policy restricting student loans to seven years of fulltime equivalent study, introduced in 2011, will affect medical students from November this year, the New Zealand Medical Students’ Association (NZMSA) president Elizabeth Berryman said.

Pyun, who is a talented violinist and works part-time for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, has managed to cram 1.3 years of study in to each academic year to pursue his twin passions of music and medicine in the seven years funded by the government student loan scheme.

This means his seven years of student loans will be up by November, with another year to go before completing his medical degree.

Both Auckland University and Otago University medical schools reserved 30 per cent of places for students who had already com- pleted a degree to ensure older students took up medicine.

Berryman said this meant at least 150 medical students would have to self-fund one to two years of study, every year from November 2016 under the current policy.

For Pyun, his music degree is on hold and he is scrambling to find $15,000 to pay for his medical school fees.

He is from a single-parent family in Dunedin and his mother works at a restaurant. He said his older sister could be a guarantor for a bank loan but it would still be tough to pay the interest.

Pyun wanted to speak publicly about his situation to support other affected students unable to get bank loans.

The NZMSA campaign against the policy, #letmefinish, launched after the budget on May 21, includes videos of affected students telling minister Steven Joyce how the policy will affect them.

A petition to remove the time restriction on student loans for medical students has attracted more 19,000 signatures.