“Free Fees” in New Zealand

By Alex Usher. Tuition-free universities aren’t new to New Zealand; in fact the whole country was more or less tuition free until 1991.  It was in that year that a former Labour government (of an unusually pro-market, privatizing bent – the party has changed quite a bit since then) introduced fees and then, a year later, a system of income contingent loans to help pay for it all.  Since then, fees policy in New Zealand has roughly mirrored Canada’s, with very significant annual rises in the 1990s followed by much slower growth after about 2000 (difference: their tuition growth rate picked up a bit after 2010 while ours didn’t). More...