VUWSA Launches Paid Placements Campaign

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Te Aka Tauira – Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA) is proud to launch our Paid Placements campaign. VUWSA supports the introduction of paid placements for students in nursing, teaching, medicine, midwifery, and social work. These students undertake essential frontline work in their compulsory placements while also facing significant financial hardship, mounting debt, and increasing pressure to leave their studies altogether. 

Across Aotearoa New Zealand, students in these professions complete hundreds and often thousands of unpaid placement hours. Nursing students complete over 1,100 hours, social work students around 960 hours, teaching students up to 120 days, and midwifery students more than 2,400 hours of unpaid clinical placement.(1) By comparison, police officers who undertake their 20 weeks of training can expect to earn an annual salary of $59,906 NZD, with government contributions to superannuation and insurance increasing the total remuneration package to $66,215 NZD.(2) Apprentices in trades are also paid as they train, earning a training wage ($19.16 NZD). (3) 

These placements are not optional. They are required to graduate and enter professions that this country desperately needs. Yet students are often expected to give up paid work, travel long distances, relocate temporarily, and work full-time hours for no pay while still covering rent, transport, food, and course costs. Research conducted by Dr. Leighton Watson from the University of Canterbury found that financial hardship caused by unpaid placements contributes to major dropout rates, including approximately 40 percent in social work and 37 percent in midwifery programmes.(4) By comparison, the Police dropout rate is about 2%.(5)  

This is a workforce issue as much as it is a student issue. “Aotearoa continues to face shortages in healthcare, education, and social services” says VUWSA Campaigns Officer Lewis Collins. “If we want to retain future nurses, teachers, doctors, midwives, and social workers, we must make these pathways financially viable”.  We need to retain our graduates to grow our workforce and improve our future.  

Paid placements are an investment in the future workforce of Aotearoa New Zealand. They would reduce financial stress, improve student retention, widen access for students from working-class backgrounds, and help address long-term staffing shortages in critical public services. A recent New Zealand Nurses Organisation student survey found that nearly two-thirds of nursing students regularly struggled to cover basic living costs, more than a third faced over $2,000 annually in placement-related expenses, and most were forced to significantly cut back their paid work while on clinical placement.(6) Students should not be pushed into poverty simply for training in professions that keep our communities functioning. 

This campaign is inspired by the hard mahi of Bex Howells, campaign lead for Paid Placements Aotearoa. We would not be able to run this campaign without her immense dedication to her advocacy and research around paid placements.  

VUWSA believes no student should have to choose between completing their qualifications and being able to afford groceries or rent. 

Our key asks: 

  1. Commitment to Introducing Paid Placements 

VUWSA calls on all the Government and opposition parties to commit to introducing a universal paid placement system for nursing, teaching, medicine, midwifery, and social work students. No student should be forced into financial hardship while completing compulsory frontline work. 

  1. Provide Immediate Cost-of-Living Support for Placement Students 

The Government must urgently expand financial support for students on placement through accommodation assistance, transport support, and increased access to living-cost payments while a full paid placement scheme is developed. 

  1. Invest in the Future Workforce of Aotearoa New Zealand 

Paid placements must be recognised as an investment in retaining future nurses, teachers, doctors, midwives, and social workers. Supporting students now will help reduce dropout rates and address long-term workforce shortages in essential public services. 

Follow us on @students4paidplacements on Instagram and keep an eye on our website for information on our upcoming actions.  

Keen to get involved? Have any pātai? Email campaigns@vuwsa.org.nz 

1 - https://www.paidplacementsaotearoa.org/challenge
2 - https://www.newcops.govt.nz/about-the-job/pay-benefits
3 - https://www.employment.govt.nz/pay-and-hours/pay-and-wages/minimum-wage/minimum-wage-rates-and-types
4 - https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/news-and-events/news/2025/unpaid-placements-strain-trainee-professionals--new-nz-study
5 - Ibid
6 - https://www.nzno.org.nz/Portals/0/publications/Report%20%20National%20Nursing%20Student%20Survey,%202025.pdf

VUWSA Welcomes Forward Momentum on the Gordon Wilson Site

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Te Aka Tauira – the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA) supports the incoming changes for the Gordon Wilson site and welcomes a focus on future student housing.

VUWSA acknowledges and expresses support for the University’s decision to proceed with the demolition of the Gordon Wilson Flats and welcomes the clarity this brings for students and the wider community.

Since 2012, the building has sat empty, taking up space in a city with a preexisting dire need for more housing. Liban Ali, VUWSA President, says that this announcement allows everyone to look ahead.

“For many years the Gordon Wilson site has been in a state of uncertainty. Today’s decision gives us a chance to move forward and start shaping the site into something new that will support future students,” says Ali. “With housing pressures growing each year, students are hopeful that this next phase will lead to warm, safe, and affordable accommodation close to campus.”

VUWSA looks forward to working constructively with the University and local community as planning progresses. “Our priority is ensuring that whatever comes next reflects the needs and wellbeing of students. We’re encouraged by the commitment to engaging with students and the community, and we’re ready to be a part of the next steps.”

We're calling for the Government to extend the Winter Energy Payment to students (AGAIN).

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Te Aka Tauira – Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA) has re-launched a petition calling on the Government to extend the Winter Energy Payment to include tertiary students. 

“Energy companies are announcing record profits whilst students are ending up sick in the hospital with respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia,” said VUWSA Welfare Vice-President Josh Robinson. “This is whilst the added pressure of the cost of living, and increased transport costs continue to mount.” 

The Winter Energy Payment is designed to help those struggling with rising living costs to keep their homes warm and dry during the coldest months in Aotearoa. Yet, tertiary students remain ineligible for this vital support — despite often living in some of the coldest, dampest, and poorest housing, and surviving on deeply strained incomes. Access to the Winter Energy Payment would ease the impossible choice students currently face; a warm home or affording the necessities. 

According to the People’s Inquiry into Student Wellbeing, two-thirds of students regularly go without enough money for basic necessities like food, clothing, power bills, and healthcare. Meanwhile, annual electricity prices have climbed by $120 since April 2024, and Aotearoa’s four largest energy companies reported a staggering $2.7 billion in combined profits last year. 

In 2024, nearly 1,000 students applied for Victoria University’s Winter Energy Grant, with the most common concerns listed being financial hardship and cold accommodation. 

The Winter Energy Payment, introduced in 2017 by the Labour Government, currently supports most beneficiary groups — except students. VUWSA believes this is an unjust oversight and is urging the Government to correct it. “Students deserve to live in warm, dry homes without sacrificing their health or skipping meals,” Robinson added. 

Te Aka Tauira is calling on all students, whānau, and supporters to sign the petition and support the push to end student poverty and energy hardship.

Sign the petition now on the ActionStation website.

Grand Theft Academia: Government Continues to Rob Young People of Their Futures

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Te Aka Tauira – the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA) is staggered by the Government’s failure to fund tertiary education, and failure to provide any meaningful support for students struggling through with the cost of living, a lack of jobs and  gutting of public services.

VUWSA President Liban Ali says, “This Budget fails students. Costs are rising, but support isn’t. Students are working longer hours to get by. Study is harder. Life is harder. We asked for help – the Government gave us nothing. Freezing student allowance thresholds is a cut by stealth.

This Budget ignores the student cost of living crisis. It makes it harder to live, and harder to learn. Once again, students have left behind. We deserve better, we won’t forget this.”  

This year’s Budget has nothing to offer students, with bread-and-butter initiatives being underfunded by the Government. Inflation adjusted, Budget 2025 has only made room for a measly 3% increase in student allowance funding and has also made it harder for young people to access the Jobseeker Benefit by introducing means testing.  

VUWSA is also concerned by the 20% reduction in funding for essential student loan management services while, as has been recently reported, students have already been facing increased wait times to access essential funds from StudyLink.

“It is disgusting to see the Government continue to overlook student poverty.” VUWSA’s Welfare VP, Josh Robinson says, “In the aftermath of the rise of public transport fares, increased energy prices, and cost of living, the Government is both setting a price on the human right to education and robbing it from us in broad daylight.”  

VUWSA is disheartened by the Government’s continued failure to adequately fund the Tertiary Sector. “Education is a public good.” said Academic VP Ethan Rogacion, “It is time that our Government starts acting like it.” This year’s Budget allows Universities to hike fees up to 6% and sets aside some funding for some STEM subjects but still comes at significant costs to students.  

“The Government has disestablished the PM’s Scholarship for Asia and South America from June, has made University more expensive, and has pitted faculties against each other by increasing funding for STEM at the cost of humanities subjects,” Rogacion says.

“Our Government has a responsibility to its students, to ensure that all young people can get an education that helps them achieve their goals, and does not merely push them into fields they deem to be economically useful.”

In addition, Engagement VP Aidan Donoghue adds, “To give with one hand, and take with the other, is not growth, it is stagnation. I am puzzled as to who or what this goal of growth is for?  It certainly isn’t for women, students, the poor, health or education?

“It's matter of choice, and this government is making active choices that undermine decades of social investment. The average student has thousands of dollars invested in them, and all the opportunities they’ve been promised have been ripped out from under them.”

VUWSA Spokespeople: