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Universal Student Allowances

Published: Mon 21 Jul, 2008 | 12 Comments
Tags: money, politics, students, Labour

Recently, Tertiary Education Minister Pete Hodgson asked his Ministry to find out how much it would cost to give all tertiary students a student allowance. For those of you not in-the-know, currently student allowances are 'means tested' against your parents income until you're 25 (even if your parents don't help you with University costs).

 

The results of their investigations were (to quote stuff.co.nz):

.... that removing income tests on the allowance and providing it to all fulltime students would cost a total of $2.09 billion over four years.

The net extra cost of such a plan is $728 million after the existing costs of the scheme are removed, along with a forecast plunge in borrowing under the student loans scheme that might accompany such a plan.

 

Hold on - did I read that right? The cost would go down by 1.3 billion dollars once you factor in savings from not using the current plan? Then what the fandangle are we currently spending that money on?! Does it really cost more than a billion dollars just to make sure only the right students get a student allowance?

 

Regardless of what you think about student allowances, every taxpayer should be outraged at this horrendous waste of money.

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