Having long been a part of the whinging generation of New Zealand youth who believed that student loans would do more harm than good to the country by driving young graduates overseas in order to pay back their loans, I saw an article on stuff today which unfortunately added to the mounting piles of evidence that suggests we were right all along.
Not only are doctors (with their average loan of NZ$68,000), dentists and other with a fairly high earning potential leaving NZ in order to repay their huge loans, it also seems that prefessions with more modest earning potentials such as teachers are also leaving to repay their student loans, which for teachers average NZ$23,000.
The sad thing is that not only are the repayments driving NZ’s best and brightest overseas, it is also depriving NZ of skilled workers in areas that are already experiencing critical staffing shortages such as health and education.