The Prime Minister’s Science Adviser Sir Peter Gluckman told the Sunday Star Times recently that higher numbers of ‘scholarship children’ are passing over New Zealand universities to study abroad.
“They are very talented children from top schools and the world is their oyster. There are a number of them going to do their undergraduate degree offshore. The probability of them returning is very low,” Dr Gluckman said.
Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister Steven Joyce said he suspected the numbers of undergraduate students heading overseas would continue to grow and he was not concerned if they did.
“We live in a global world. You cannot say you want to stop the world and get off. We want to keep encouraging opportunities for young people.”
Mr Joyce also denied that the National Party had made an election promise to stop the brain drain, rather it promised to ‘increase the success of the New Zealand economy so more people felt they could be successful here’.
“It doesn’t apply to undergraduates, it applies to people earning high incomes in New Zealand,” he said.
Mr Joyce said it was important to look at the trend of undergraduates going overseas as a benefit to New Zealand, because it was likely more students from other countries would also come here.
Newstalk ZB said that the government was keeping a close guard on its 2012 budget plans for the student loans scheme.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister John Key indicated that the scheme was in for a major shake-up. Following an Official Information Act request, Education Ministry confirmed that it has prepared eight budget-related reports on the issue.
However, it is refusing to release them until July at the earliest.
Meanwhile, Treasury is being equally close-lipped on the advice it has tendered – so far it has pushed out the time for making a response to official information requests by a few weeks.
Labour Party Deputy Leader Grant Robertson told Newstalk ZB that he feared some tertiary courses will have their student loan cover removed.
Mr Robertson believes that the government will move to limit student borrowing for courses that are deemed not likely to generate future income.
“Mr Joyce has already talked about showing what qualifications, get you what income. I think that is the area where you can predict that there would be some changes,” he said.
Editor’s Note: Since the receipt of the above report from the Tertiary Education Union, Mr Joyce has already indicated the changes being made to the Student Loan Scheme (Read related report in Educationlink).
