Exodus Around the World – What is the Cost?

Recently it has been reported that New Zealanders in the thousands are seeking jobs in Australia and perhaps elsewhere. The question is being asked, what does New Zealand have to offer to job seekers? It’s not just happening here though, in Ireland the Guardian reports that Irish graduates may leave the country in droves as well.

The demographics reported in the stories aren’t exactly the same. But a lot of those kiwi job seekers would be graduates looking for a job (I am one of them). This situation does highlight one thing in my mind though – how successful tertiary students are as a lobby group. While the “golden age” of having “free” university is gone, we still subsidise a large proportion of fees. They have managed to secure things like interest-free student loans. But like every other lobby group – no amount of money would really make them shut up and go away.

Apparently 24% of New Zealand born graduates live overseas, according to Jim Hickey quoted in this article. I say students are very good lobbyists because somehow we say that it’s okay to subsidise the people who are probably better off to go to university, only for them to go overseas for some other country to reap the benefit!

Of course, talk of a “brain drain” is nothing new. But I don’t think many people have asked – are we funding this phenomenon ourselves, and if so, to what extent and why do we do it?

Of course they are

This NZPA article on stuff reports that more students are borrowing than ever before. Of course they are. There are more students wanting to enrol in tertiary institutions. And they would borrow more, other things being equal because fees go up every year.

The lack of jobs in the recession has mostly contributed to this increase. What would be far more interesting to know is if the proportion of students on student loans was changing, or if the amount being borrowed or paid in allowances changed relative to the increases in fees or inflation or other measure that takes rising costs into account.

What I have seen in debates about tertiary education funding, particularly loans, is that there are headline figures banded about with little (if any) breakdown of what the figure is made up of.