Reinstate fees free
Bring back fee-free study for New Zealand students, redesigned to reach the low-income students it missed, so that no one is priced out of starting a degree.
Fight For
Fees Free
They promised us a start. Then they moved the goalposts. Then they took the whole field.
This is our manifesto.
Promised. Cut. Scrapped.
Fees free was supposed to say one thing to every young New Zealander: your future matters more than your debt. Here is what happened to that promise.
Left mid-degree
Think about who got hit hardest. Students who chose a university because fees free took some weight off their shoulders. Students who are two years into a three-year degree. Students who were told “your last year will be covered”, who planned rent, work hours and loans around it.
Current second-years who missed out on a free first year now miss out on a free final year too.
The rug was pulled out while we were standing on it. Students’ associations across the country called the decision a retrograde step that raises barriers to study, and the people it lands on hardest are those least able to absorb thousands of dollars of extra debt.
And the money? It was not reinvested in students. Less than half comes back to tertiary education, while fees are allowed to climb. We are being asked to pay more and get less, and called the cost “savings”.
Why would we stay?
Aotearoa already has a young-people problem. In the year to March 2026, reported Stats NZ figures put citizen departures at about 62,800, and roughly 40% of those leaving were aged 18 to 30. About 63% went to Australia, where wages are higher and citizens can work without a visa.
Now stack the cost of a degree on top. Australia’s door is open, our support just got shut, and every student weighing up where to study, and where to build a life afterwards, is doing the maths.
One side of the ledger keeps growing. Guess which one our best minds will follow.
Every graduate who leaves takes their skills, their taxes and their future with them. We cannot keep educating brilliant people only to hand them to someone else.
“But it failed”
We know what they say
The government argues fees free did not lift enrolments or completion rates, and that it helped too few students from low-income backgrounds, with uptake skewed toward wealthier families. Some of those criticisms are fair, and even Labour’s leader has said he would not design it exactly the same today.
Our answer: if a policy has flaws, fix it. Better targeting and better design can reach the students it missed. Scrapping it entirely while fees rise leaves the students it was meant to help with nothing at all.
7 November. Vote.
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Parties that backed scrapping fees free will only reverse course if enough of us vote against them. The Green Party has called the decision outrageous and has said it will fight to reinstate fees-free support. Labour has said it will not reinstate the scheme as it was, so ask every Labour candidate, loudly, to commit to real support for students. Vote for the parties that will put students first.
Check you’re enrolledCheck our work
- NZ Herald: “Budget leak”: Winston Peters confirms fees-free university scheme to be scrapped (8 May 2026)
- Times Higher Education: Tertiary education a net loser from New Zealand fee-free reversal (28 May 2026)
- 1News: End of fees-free scheme confirmed after Peters’ “Budget leak”
- RNZ via ODT: Greens slam decision to scrap fees-free tertiary
- RNZ via Scoop: Students question university affordability after government scraps fees-free scheme (12 May 2026)
- VUWSA: Scrapping Fees Free; a kick to the gut while students are already down
- Massive Magazine: Budget 2026: What students should expect
- NZ Herald: Inland Revenue spent $50k on advertising fees-free after learning policy would be axed (party positions)
- The Spinoff: The troubled life and death of the fees-free tertiary scheme (11 May 2026)
- Korea Business Review, citing Stats NZ (year to March 2026): New Zealand’s “brain drain” warning