Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association

The government should abolish tertiary fees as part of its proposed funding changes. Today the government announced that it would increase funding to tertiary institutions by $26 million and has indicated it will make further investment after coming funding reforms.

Since the 1980’s students have suffered from sky rocketing course fees. Currently student debt in NZ is over 8 billion dollars and over half this debt is caused by student fees.

“A key goal for any serious funding review would be making tertiary education free” says Nick Kelly President of VUWSA.

“Over the last six years the wealthiest 205 New Zealanders increased their wealth by $21.6 billion. It’s unacceptable that the wealth of a privileged few has increased so much when part of this amount could have been used to get rid of tertiary fees.”

“Any funding review that doesn’t seriously address the student fees issue will be doomed to be nothing more than window dressing”.

ENDS

For further details, contact:

Nick Kelly
President – Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association
027 563 6986 – 04 463 6986
nick.kelly@vuwsa.org.nz