Four-year Student Allowance Cap Unfair on Medical Students

Four-year Student Allowance Cap Unfair on Medical Students

The New Zealand Medical Students’ Association strongly opposes the four-year cap on receiving student allowances proposed by the Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce.

NZMSA President Michael Chen-Xu says restricting student allowances will make it harder for people from low-income backgrounds to enter tertiary study and to become doctors.

“This is an inflexible scheme which not only fails to acknowledge that some professional undergraduate programmes take longer than four years, but also unfairly punishes students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Approximately 20-25% of students enter medicine after finishing a three to four-year degree, and will therefore have to do a minimum of eight years of study to complete a medical degree. Many students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and graduate-entry students rely on the student allowance to get through medical school.

Mr Chen-Xu says that any student who currently qualifies for the student allowance will now have to borrow money from the student-loan scheme and elsewhere to live and study, thereby increasing their burden of debt.

“We have grave concerns that the seven-year cap on student loans and now this four-year cap on access to student allowances may force students to take out high-interest bank loans to live, which will reduce access to tertiary education for many students and is unreasonable.”

Mr Chen-Xu says that debt is the biggest driver of graduates leaving New Zealand and the country already has a huge shortage of doctors. It also negatively impacts on student wellbeing.

“We want our students to focus on studying medicine, not worrying about how to meet the costs of living.”

NZMSA believes that funding caps aimed at tertiary students should be proportionate to the length of the degree and should not discriminate against those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

The New Zealand Medical Students’ Association is the national advocacy body for medical students in New Zealand.

ENDS

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