Student loan costs

Steven Joyce announced:

The latest Student Loan Scheme annual report shows an 11 per cent increase in repayments and a decrease in the overall cost of the scheme, Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister Steven Joyce says. …

“The write-down on student loan lending reached 47 cents for each dollar lent in 2008/2009. We have now reduced that to 39 cents in the dollar, and are working to reduce the cost further.

• The cost of lending has fallen 17.5% over the last three years. The cost fell from 47 cents per dollar in the 2009 valuation, to 39 cents per dollar in the current year.
• Repayments increased by 11% to $767 million in 2011/2012
• The median repayment time is 6.7 years and it reduces to 5.5 years for those who remain in New Zealand until repayment

That’s a pretty useful improvement in the loans scheme. In an ideal world we’d scrap interest free loans but that would be political suicide, and just be reversed at the next election. The changes Joyce has made though are sustainable and worthwhile.

The annual report for the scheme is here. Some facts:

• Average amount borrowed $7,633 and median $6,709
• Average loan balance $18,507 and median $12,849
• 29% of the adult population have taken out a student loan at some stage
• 24% of loan balances are under $6,000, 41% under $10,000 and 56% under $15,000. One third are over $20,000
• 0.2% of loan balance are over $100,000