National is making tertiary education more expensive at exactly the time students and whānau are already under immense financial pressure.
Over the past two years, we’ve seen repeated fee increases, the scrapping of Fees Free, and rising costs for accommodation, transport, and everyday essentials. The result is that the cost of getting a qualification has increased by more than 19 percent.
For many Māori and Pasifika learners, cost is already one of the biggest barriers to accessing tertiary education. Every extra dollar in fees risks pushing more people away from study, leaving them with larger debts, or losing them to Australia.
Education should be a pathway to opportunity, not another cost-of-living burden, and it should help grow the workforce that New Zealand needs.
Labour believes we should be investing in our universities, polytechnics, and wānanga so they can deliver high-quality education without continually passing costs on to students. If we want a more productive economy and a highly skilled workforce, we need to make tertiary education more accessible, not less.
