Student loans

A survey of New Zealand postgraduate students has found that 40% are thinking of giving up studying because their eligibility for the student allowance is being stripped away next year.

More than 100,000 New Zealanders have overpaid a total of $6.4 million on their student loans.

Notwithstanding the very real benefits and social imperatives of helping students from relatively underprivileged backgrounds through tertiary education, the Government's intention to claw back eligibility for student allowances, and to increase the rate at which interest-free student loans are repaid, does address the problem of steadily rising debt.

Those people with student loans going on their big OE will have to start repaying their loans after just one year and provide Inland Revenue with a contact in New Zealand to help track them down.

Proposed Government moves to rein in the student loan scheme "in a big way" could ultimately harm the Dunedin economy, Otago Polytechnic Students' Association official Mark Baxter warns.

Legal action is to start against Kiwis in Australia who have not made any effort to repay millions of dollars in outstanding student loans.

Legal action is about to begin against hundreds of New Zealand expats who have not made any effort to repay millions of dollars in student loans.

I'm one of the thousands of New Zealanders who attend, or have attended, university as an over-55 "mature student" and incurring a government-funded student loan to pay course fees.

Tertiary education minister Steven Joyce says he is "comfortable" thousands of tertiary students will not get student loans to continue their studies next year.

More than 22,000 overseas-based student loan borrowers on a repayment holiday have been reminded by IRD that have a payment to make by September 30.

Tertiary students who risk losing access to loans for failing over half their papers over two years can appeal for leniency if they show they are pulling their weight, says Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce.