'Sneaky and unfair’: Students respond to scrapping of fees free

Wednesday, 13 May 2026

University students say the scrapping of the fees free subsidy will make life even harder as they struggle with high living costs and a bleak employment landscape.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis this week confirmed the Government will stop the programme, which subsidises university fees for the final year of study, from next year.

She said the country was in a 'heck of a lot of debt', and the scheme had not met its objectives of increasing university enrolments, or helping disadvantaged students into tertiary education.

But second year university student Charlie Cowdery said he’s “livid”.

He’d crunched the numbers before he began his Bachelor of Communications, trying to figure out how much debt he would walk away with.

If he’d known the projected $15,000 would become $25,000, the Victoria University student would most likely have shelved the idea of university, or taken a gap year, he said.

Now, he’s facing years of debt, a prospect that has sent him and his friends into a “pit of despair”.

“We all feel like we have been lied to… I'm bloody livid … it's a cynical broken promise by the Government to students.”

Cowdery is considering taking his skills and knowledge overseas after graduation.

“Why would you want to stay in New Zealand when the Government's … actively taking away any incentive or ability to have a future here?”

Lauren Palmer, a first year political science student at the University of Canterbury (UC) lives at home in Rolleston, and said the move would hit students from low-income families hardest.

“I think it's sneaky and I think it's unfair…the fact that they've just told us and completely switched is so unfair for us, especially low-income families.”

Another first year UC student Carla Greyling, who is studying social and environmental sustainability, said the financial stress was constant.

“It’s just constantly in the back of your mind as a student, that pressure and… now [the removal of fees free] is just added on top of it.”

For marketing and management student Angus McAllister, now in his third year, the scheme - which until the end of 2024 was for the first year of study after he left school - was a factor in his decision to enrol and taking it away was “unjust”, he said.

“I was a bit unsure about uni, so I thought I'd come and try first year, and if I liked it, I'd stick around and I enjoyed it, so I decided to stay.”

UC second year social work student Charlie Haycock agreed, saying the subsidy of about $10,000 was a big factor in her decision.

“I think it's a lot of money to be promised and then it gets thrown away.”

Victoria University of Wellington Student Association president Aidan Donoghue said the move was “abhorrent”, and a “rug pull” for students who had factored the fees free year into their planning.

“Some have said they're the first in their family to go to university, and how they were weighing up whether to go into trades, or to take that risk [and] get a degree.”

Now, graduates would be saddled with roughly a third more debt, he said.

The fees free scheme was introduced by the Labour government in 2018 and covered the first year of tertiary study. In 2024, the coalition Government shifted the subsidy to the final year.

At its peak, the scheme cost about $350 million a year.

For year 13 students at Hillmorton High School in Christchurch, the financial cost of tertiary study weighs heavily on their post-school plans, with all of them saying they would need to take out a student loan.

Mehdi Shafahi has decided to enrol at Otago University to study health sciences next year but said the financial commitment was a major consideration.

“…if you don't finish your degree, and you leave halfway through, you're going to have all that debt and you're going to have to pay that off.”

Arleana Woo would like to become a paramedic, and was considering a bachelor of health science but said the scrapping of the fees free scheme had put that into doubt.

“For me I feel like it's bumped my hopes down to get into university, because for me financial struggle is a big part of it and I worry a lot about that.”

Hillmorton High School principal Sam Ainsworth said the move would make access to higher education more difficult for many students.

“It doesn't feel like a very progressive decision to make.”

He said his role as a high school principal was to try to remove barriers to education, but the removal of fees free created a barrier.

UC commerce student Rore Morgan said the Government needed to look at the scheme as an investment in youth “not just an expense that needs to be cut.”

He said the timing was particularly grating when options for young people were limited.

“A lot of young people are struggling to find work, so a lot of students have very high loans, especially if they come from households that can't afford to contribute towards their weekly living costs as well.”

Otago University political science associate professor Brian Roper said the Government had ignored more significant drivers of falling tertiary education enrolments, relative to population, over the past 20 years.

These included higher than average tuition fees among OECD countries, increasing student debt, and comparatively low levels of student allowance provisions.

“The idea that you could make one small change and expect that, in and of itself, to have a substantial impact on student participation in tertiary education is entirely unrealistic.”

*CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story had Charlie Cowdery’s surname wrong. (Amended, Wednesday May 13, 2026. 09.22am)