In her opening speech to Parliament this year, Helen Clark said: “For the past 8 years, our top priority has been to improve both living standards and the services that our families, young and old, need[…] It has certainly helped to have interest-free loans and capped fees for tertiary students to make education more affordable.”
Clark claims that Labour has “capped” our fees. However, the fee maxima scheme does not set a total cap on fees; it merely caps their annual rate of increase to five per cent (with some exceptions to allow higher raises). This is significantly higher than the current rate of inflation (3.2 per cent) . There more I have thought about Clark’s statement, the more I have become convinced that, so long as universities can and do raise our fees faster than inflation, it is a straight-out lie to say that fees are “capped.” Fees are not capped – their increase is capped, but since it is capped beyond inflation fees still become more and more unaffordable each year.
It’s hard to believe that Labour have any real plan to ensure tertiary education is affordable (at least for those who are capable of completing it) if she’s prepared to make such blatantly false statements.