Posts by Matthew Poole
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
No, but you can still get a loan for fees and course-related costs, as there’s unlikely to be allowance money left over after living costs to cover those things.
To steal a phrase from our host, Duh! The student allowance's existence is entirely predicated on paying your living costs. It's never, ever been intended to be sufficient to cover the costs of studying. That it and the living-costs component of a student loan are mutually exclusive says everything about their roles: they're there so you can live while studying, not so that you don't have to find other sources of funding for your study.
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
They’ve probably also got a bit of a loan, because the allowance isn’t exactly gravy.
Doesn't work like that. If you're getting the student allowance you're not allowed to draw down living costs on your student loan.
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Lucy Stewart,
I certainly feel the current repayment threshold is too low – below minimum wage, really?
Aye. Really. Minimum wage is $13.50/hour. $13.5*40*52=$28,080 (which is a fucking pittance in itself). Repayment threshold is $19,084 according to the IRD. So it's slightly over 2/3 of full-time minimum wage ($18,701), but only slightly.
Full-time on the Australian minimum wage of AUD15.51/hour works out to be AUD32,260, or slightly below 2/3 the repayment threshold for FY2013 of AUD49,095. Interesting reversal there. -
OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Scott Chris,
If you aren’t paying interest on a loan then the average person needs to be compelled by law to repay it – at a reasonable clip.
I would say that 10% of all income over a level that's not even 2/3 of full-time minimum wage is a reasonable clip, personally. In nominal terms Australia doesn't compel commencement of repayment until the borrower's income is nearly 2.5 times higher than the NZ level, never mind in exchange-converted terms. They also increase the repayment rate as income increases, in recognition that those who have done particularly well from their education should be repaying society commensurate with the additional financial benefit they are getting; after all, a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.
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Legal Beagle: Semi-Random election law thoughts, in reply to Islander,
Do They [want maximum voting participation]?
The Electoral Commission certainly do. Whether that extends to our elected overlords is a completely different question.
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Ben Curran,
As far as I can tell, the 4 year limit is a change. It is currently 200 weeks, which yes, pretty much gets you 5 and a bit years of study. I was under the impression that this was changing to 4 years of efts which is less than 200 weeks.
Nope, staying at 200 weeks. From http://beehive.govt.nz/speech/speech-notes-investing-tertiary-education-budget-2012:
We are likely to freeze the parental income threshold for the next four years at its current rate, and ensure the current limit of 200 weeks access to student allowances is consistently applied, and towards the early years of study. In practice this means removing access for masters and PhD students and for long courses beyond the first 200 weeks of study. Those students will continue to have access to interest-free loans. -
One minor correction, 200 weeks, equating to roughly five years of study. Which gets you a conjoint LLB or Bachelor of Engineering with any three-year degree, a Masters on top of a three-year Bachelors, a Bachelor of Architecture, or a standard Dentistry, or Vet Science degree. It doesn’t get you close to being a doctor, especially since most med students have already done undergrad study before commencing med school (brother knows a doctor who had a PhD in Statistics before starting med school). It doesn’t get you post-graduate engineering unless you do nothing but a BEng. In short, it steers students towards post-graduate Commerce and Arts – nothing wrong with those, but we don’t need them in large numbers – and away from anything that’s vaguely demanding. It certainly doesn’t encourage students to stay in NZ post graduation because their loans will be much larger from the borrowing to cover living costs.
As an example of how much difference living costs makes, I had to borrow for living costs in my first BCom year. That year’s living costs were more than the combined course and course-related costs for my first and second year. For a medical student it’s roughly doubling their loan each year that they have to borrow full living costs, and I don’t know of many med students who have a whole lot of time and inclination to get a part-time job by the time they’re at the point in their studies where they will cease to be eligible for any student allowance. -
As I said on the Book of Face about today's Herald article that Steve linked, other than, possibly, armed insurrection against the state, I don't think that there should be any matter taken more seriously by the Police than attacks on the integrity of our electoral system. After all, without the checks and balances of a strong democracy your murder may just not be a high priority.
Which means, given that the Police don't appear to treat electoral offences as being terribly important, that we should probably investigate an alternative enforcement body for electoral law.
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Hard News: #JohnDotBanks and all, in reply to Russell Brown,
hiding behind a synonym
(emphasis added)
Well, yes, we do find him to be another name for all kinds of things.
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Hard News: #JohnDotBanks and all, in reply to 3410,
the word on the street is that the SkyCity convention centre deal is dead in the water.
Good.
The Herald has today announced SkyCity has identified 291% more problem gamblers last year than in 2008 but only increased exclusions by 27%, leading Problem Gambling Foundation's spokesman to the conclusion that "it's my belief that actually the business model is dependent upon people with problems."
I wonder what that tobacco will taste like in Shon Key's pipe.