Almost 40 percent of students at Victoria University of Wellington went without a meal in the week before they were surveyed because they could not afford the food, and the same share said they had missed classes because they could not afford the bus.
The figures come from the State of the Students Report, released on Monday by Te Aka Tauira, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association. The association said the results showed students picking up extra shifts alongside full-time study, adding to their debt and leaning on family just to cover the basics.
The survey ran online between 4 and 15 May this year and drew 1238 responses. It was anonymous and voluntary, and students chose whether to take part, so it is not a random sample of the university roll. That is worth keeping in mind, because people under financial strain are more likely to answer a survey about money than people who are comfortable. It does not make the answers wrong, but it means the numbers describe the 1238 students who responded rather than every student on campus.
What the responses do give is a detailed picture of where a student’s money goes. On average, a Victoria student reported spending $339.49 a week on essentials. Rent took $231.60 of that. Groceries took $91.50. Public transport around Wellington City took $16.39.
Set that against what the state provides. From 1 April this year, a single student under 24 living away from home can receive up to $333.38 a week in Student Allowance after tax, and a student borrowing living costs from their student loan can draw up to $333.48 a week. Either way, the maximum falls about six dollars short of the average weekly essentials bill before a single other cost is counted.
That gap is the part worth sitting with. The $339.49 figure covers rent, food and bus fares and nothing else. Power, internet, a phone plan, a doctor’s visit, textbooks, a printer allowance, a winter jacket, a bond, a dentist, a bus out of town at the end of semester, none of that is in the total. A student on the full allowance who spends the average on those three items is already behind, and everything beyond them has to come from paid work, family, or more borrowing.
“The skyrocketing cost of living is having a profound impact on our students,” said VUWSA Academic Vice-President and report project lead Ethan Rogacion, “which leads to students needing to either add to their student debt, pick up more shifts at work, or ask their families for support just to make ends meet.”
RNZ spoke to students on campus about what those numbers look like day to day. Pyper-Alex Adams, a third-year psychological sciences student, holds a part-time job and a casual position on top of full-time study, and said the casual hours were unreliable.
“If I get offered shifts that’s great but I don’t have any shifts this week, I don’t have any shifts next week. I’ve actually had to apply to the student hardship grant to help with my power bill this month because I don’t know if I’m going to be able to pay it without any shifts from my second job,” Adams said.
“I am barely able to afford rent. We’re cold all the time because we’re only using the heat pump during free power. I’m skipping meals.”
Cam Dickson, a third-year maths and statistics student, described the same squeeze arriving through the grocery shop. “You know people talk about chicken and rice? We’re not doing chicken and rice, we’re doing beans and rice. I’m moving away from fresh fruit and vegetables because they’re not super accessible right now. Going heavy on the carbs, on the cans, on the box stuff,” he said.
Dickson is among the students who have missed class over the cost of getting there. “I don’t have public transport in the wiggle room. I’ve got no way to own a car, to pay for the fuel. I’m very constrained to where my feet can get me and sometimes that’s not university,” he said.
His answer helps explain why the average transport figure in the report looks so small. A $16.39 weekly spend on buses is not evidence that getting to campus is cheap. It is partly a record of students who have decided they cannot pay for the trip and are walking instead, or not going at all. Low spending on a thing people need is usually a sign of rationing rather than of a bargain.
The most striking numbers in the report are not about food or rent. Only 33 percent of the students surveyed said they felt hopeful about finding work in their field in New Zealand. Seventy percent said they had thought about leaving the country for better opportunities in the previous six months. Among students taking third-year papers, closest to finishing and looking hardest at the job market, that rose to 78 percent.
Adams put the same doubt in plainer terms. “I’m going to university to try and get a degree. To maybe have a job someday, if I can get one in this country, but I’m seeing people my age that are doing so much better without the degree, which is the thing that we’re all told in high school to do, right?”
VUWSA president Aidan Donoghue, a Masters student, said the competition for graduate work had changed how students approached a degree. “It’s so competitive that you must be a straight A student. You must have X amount of internships. You must have all these extra curricular activities at this point just to put your name out there,” Donoghue said.
He had a response ready for the older New Zealanders who remember being broke at university and treat it as a normal part of the experience. “Students aren’t just complaining. It’s just as expensive as it was then but twenty years of inflation on top. Plus stagnant wage growth, plus competitive working environment. All the bad things of university that you have experienced have gotten worse over decades of compounding interest,” he said.
Rogacion made the same point more bluntly, saying student poverty is not a rite of passage and that treating it as one leaves students feeling they have no option but to go overseas.
The association is asking central government, councils and universities to lift financial support for students. It has not put a figure on what that should be. What its own survey does supply is a benchmark that did not exist before, which is a weekly essentials bill for a Wellington student of $339.49, sitting just above the most any single student under 24 can receive.
Were you a student who worked through your degree, and how does the maths compare with what students face now? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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