Budget 2025 – a fiscal hole filled by taking from the most vulnerable.

Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union warns that this year’s budget doesn’t contain enough new money to keep the lights on.

Te Pou Ahurei | National Secretary Sandra Grey says “the funding commitments made, even in the STEM subjects and those described by the ministers as “workforce demand areas”, fail to cover rising costs in the sector.”

“The shortfall of new money will be met by job cuts, increased student fees, and propping up the system by hoping more international students will come.”

“This is another example of a government that has created a fiscal hole, filling it by taking from the most vulnerable. They have done it to Māori by cancelling Whānau Ora contracts, they have done it to women by cancelling pay equity and now they are doing it to young people by making education unaffordable, and defunding subjects like arts and the humanities.”

“Instead of showing leadership by investing money in our future workforce, they would rather give tax breaks to landlords and tobacco companies.”

Craig Marshall, an Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | The University of Otago, says “it’s regrettable that this should have happened and it illustrates a failure to understand what a proper education system is.”

“For funding on STEM to almost match inflation is beneficial but most universities would be looking at ways of ensuring that their humanities programes remain viable. If you don’t know the value of what people want and how they intend to use it then the thing has little value. Humanities tell us about the way people think, which is something we also need to know.”