I graduated in 1990, just before the student loan scheme was introduced by the Bolger National Government. It was during the last years of a virtually free tertiary education system, and a Kodak moment for New Zealand as we commemorated 150 years since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

They were also halcyon days for student unions. While student politicians grappled with the challenging political question of how to increase participation in student politics, the threatening clouds of right-wing takeover and voluntary unionism were gathering force. It just didn’t occur to student politicians that no-one participated because student politics was totally irrelevant to anybody but themselves. Political onanism made conditions ripe for a full-on assault on student organisations and therefore students’ ability to mobilise.

Kind of tragic, really. Students’ faith in their associations was at an all-time low, and the tacticians of the right saw the opportunity to nobble opposition to their plans for the tertiary sector. They successfully ran a campaign to attack the foundations of student political power: the ability and resources to organise large numbers of students.

Waikato, where I was studying, quickly succumbed to voluntary unionism, with other universities following. The backers of right-wing student organisations put significant resources into the campaign and were also helped by their ability to control the language of debate – legislation still requires any referendum to poll students on support for ‘compulsory’ rather than ‘universal’ membership of their student unions.

The dramatic effect this victory had on students’ ability to mobilise should not be underestimated. Student activists faced a lack of support from their associations, and became dispirited and pessimistic. Opposition to the loans scheme was weakened by a debate about its inevitability, and whether students would be better to focus on making it as student-friendly as possible. As a result, the National Government faced little significant opposition to implementing the student loans scheme, and made few concessions to students.

It has taken an enormous amount of time to rebuild students’ ability to campaign. Over the last four or five years, I have noticed a discernible increase in both the level and the sophistication of student activism. Most universities have returned to universal union membership, and that is almost certainly a major factor. Probably also important is a sense that the Labour Government is susceptible to student pressure, coupled with strong and vocal student allies in the Greens.

Student debt is becoming a significant public issue. This is evidenced by the swarm of political parties finally gathering round the stinking log of student debt. Evidence is growing about its effects on fertility, student and graduate hardship, migration and home ownership. I am also concerned about its effects on the experience of tertiary education itself.

It appears to me that tertiary education has become increasingly vocational. The recent survey of first-year doctors suggests that career choice is strongly affected by student debt. It seems obvious that, in addition, high student fees and restricted access to allowances creates an enormous disincentive to take courses of study that don't ensure high post-graduation incomes. That must be to the detriment of tertiary institutions and to society generally.

The financial pressures on students seems to have had a negative effect of student life. The appearance of campuses today is of a place where students rush from lecture to lecture to lecture to work. Universities have a statutory role to be the critic and conscience of society, but if that role is relegated to the academics and not enhanced by the lives and activities of students themselves, we are failing.



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