NZUSA on Student Debt
The Press reports NZUSA has released a survey by TNS which says average student debt has risen by 54% since 2004 and was now $28,838.
However the official report on the student loan scheme to 30 June 2007, has the average loan balance as being just $16,833 and the median balance $11,087.
And if one looks at what the median balance was upon leaving study, it was around $13,000 for males and almost $12,000 for females.
In fact only 15.6% of borrowers have a loan balance of over $30,000.
So how do you explain the difference? Well the NZUSA study isn’t of debt through the student loan scheme – as most would assume, but of all estimated borrowings including loans from parents.
So if the average debt is $16,800 (and is probably less for the average student because many students are only one or two years into their study), then the NZUSA study is saying private borrowing on average is $12,000.
What would be useful would be for NZUSA to put the full survey results on its website (not even the PR is there) so one can see the breakdown of how much of the alleged $28,000 average debt is student loan scheme debt and private debt, and this would allow us to compare the student loan component to the official stats.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:28 am
All this student loans nonsense isn’t worth it.
Scrap the whole thing and the bastards can take out commercial loans from trading banks like everyone else whose trying to get ahead by investing in something to increase their future earnings ability.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:01 am
So what you’re saying DPF is that the NSUSA survey more fairly reflects the magnitude of the problem.
Good rark up AW but some will think you are serious.
We already have a major problem with the young people of this country taking out loans to do any whacked out course they like whether or not there is a job at the end of it. Because they form a large part of the voting pool the government (and I doubt things will change) must then create jobs for them in the bureaucracy or “caring occupations” because they are too good to empty garbage.
Meanwhile, we have a major problem of the usefully trained young people getting out into the workforce and finding out that it was BS that training leads to a well paid job. They find themselves on the same pay as someone who drank their way through Uni doing 7 hours of lectures a week who is now employed in the bureaucracy. They have a $50K debt, have got A’s all the way through and have sat in lectures next to long term unemployed people or solo parents who are being paid to go to Uni and come out with no debt.
If they work harder their marginal tax rate is 40-70% due to lost low income entitlements so their only alternative to buy a house is to go overseas and work to save for one.
Then we all sit around and wonder why they snub their noses at us and if they do come back wealthy keep their money overseas or put it into tax dodges like land investment.
Hello? What is the solution? Well obviously pay for training of the bright motivated successful students in the skills we need. Reward hard work and innovation properly. Make them feel that they have been nurtured and appreciated and they will give something back. The rest are hobbies and people can pay for them themselves and not expect a job at the end of it. Its not rocket science after all.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Meh… until I read the whole thing, its hard not to come to the conclusion that the real student debt problem is that banks have their own sub-prime credit rackets going on on campuses. Something I’ve been saying for years…
January 25th, 2008 at 10:26 am
“Good rark up AW but some will think you are serious.”
Heh, as you know Kevin, I’m very serious.
Why should a student be entitled to taxpayer assistence while a young person starting a business isn’t?
Why shouldn’t both need to take out commercial loans if that’s what they need to get established?
January 25th, 2008 at 10:36 am
“Only the educated are free.”
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Epictetus
January 25th, 2008 at 10:49 am
AW, uh Duh, because our contry needs them. I use student in the wider sense of any sort of vocational training that the country needs (not cat homeopathy). For each vocation we should be subsidising the top students rather than the bottom ones.
Your system only works if, at the end of training, the jobs exist and pay well enough to pay back the loan and catch up to the untrained. This is clearly not the case for most jobs in NZ.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:04 am
“Duh, because our contry needs them.”
Duh, our country needs good young people in farming too, perhaps the taxpayer should buy each one a herd.
“This is clearly not the case for most jobs in NZ.”
That’ll be because these people are paying taxes to cover other peoples student loans and because their employers have the luxury of a surplus supply of graduates and so can pay their employees less. Do you believe in the free market or not?
Perhaps just when it suits you?
January 25th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Can anyone explain why NZUSA has two co-presidents? Why not a president and a vice president? What is the advantage?
January 25th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Occassionally, just occasionally expediency has to trump the market, anyway…
I’ll get these hard working people to send you a bill rather than pay for your super, after you retire AW.
hubbers, I would say it is part of EEO – they’ll be working towards having genders x ethnicities x sexual orientations co-presidents so no-one has to feel bad about themselves.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Andrew W Please dont suggest scrapping the loans For some of us its been a way to get back some of our taxes. I got my 2 to take out the loan just for study fees etc and I put the same amount into a TD until one went overseas and for the other am refunding him the amount of the principle deducted from his salary.
For we anti Socialists it nice to have a win at least now and again.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Thanks gd, in the heat of the moment I had forgotten we’d already paid taxes so our kids could go to Uni and then when they get there we have to pay again so other people’s kids can go too.
So yes AW – the best system would be lower taxes and save for your kids education or setting up a business. In the US large chunks of your income are tax deductible if they are going into college savings schemes.
What we resent is having high taxes + user pays – that system was never meant to be.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:42 am
DPF
Updating the results to their webpage would be really helpful. The website in general seems to be a little empty.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I’m not counting on any super Kevin.
Oh no! not you too gd!
Roger Douglas recognised that getting from a socialist system to a market system some people would lose out.
Oh well. Redbaiter, PhilBest and my worst fears have been realised, we have reached the point in our drift to socialism at which too many people are on the pigs back to turn back.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
AW yes that is my worst fear too.
But the true equalitist anti-socialist will realise that “user pays with targeted assistance” is inherently easily corruptible and has been corrupted despite what transprency international says about NZ.
As I said my first choice would be low taxes and save your money to spend as you like including your own child’s eductaion.
Failing that the benefits should be universal (if you make the grade on merit) with no other targeting.
I knew you wouldn’t be counting on super. I hope if you need any services there will be someone left in this country to provide them.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
“Oh no! not you too gd!”
Don’t blame him. Like many, he’s got no other option but to submit to the socialist machine.
As for your initial post, I agree entirely, but the socialists go completely spare at the thought. At the core of leftist doctrine is the idea that the gummint must deliver services like education and health. Even tho they can’t.
Nothing tho will ever convince the doctrinal leftist religionist of this fact. They will pursue it even when all the evidence overwhelmingly shows the abject failure of these services. Uneducated people. Lengthening wait queues. (leftist strategy- pump out lies and propaganda to demonstrate the opposite)
They will pursue this fantasy until the whole thing collapses in a heap. Why? The real reason we have such delusional entities is because without them, dumbfuck leftists would have nothing else to feel smug and superior about.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
RB Correct I am a realist so use the system to my best advantage. And thats why even thou we dont have a income splitting taxation policy I have devised my own to legally minimise the taxation I pay.
Some set their own taxation policy and if it doesnt equate to the current regimes then tough titty
As for the 39c at $60K Any Chartered Accountant will tell you the number so self employed clients who manage drawings of just short of that amount with their partners on the books as well.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
One would also think that after today’s march they would have that original PR up on their site by now…
January 28th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Redbaiter
I’m so pleased to learn that I can call you a dumb/dim/blue/fuck/wit and nothing happens on this National supportive site. Good manners don’t actually exist in blue and (what’s liberal umm) black land, it seems.
Guess what – we’ve already discovered that the free market is a failure, communism is a failure and whatever Bolger threw at us in the 90s (it was probably fascism) was a failure and now we have a decent attempt at an inclusive society with few unemployed, attempts to get the mojo back for the poor souls who couldn’t handle this 90′s greed thing, attempts at finding a common ground for all Kiwis to have a life and build equal families and sustainable businesses – terrible eh.
Get rid of it – what shall we go back to that was so great – ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm.