Industry warns against rush to university

A bias towards university education is leaving thousands of young people with unnecessary debt, trades training organisations say.

The government is offering a year’s free tertiary education from next year, with plans to gradually extend it to three years.

However, the Industry Training Federation said it feared that could lead to a glut of people heading to university when they might otherwise have done trade training.

Federation chief executive Josh Williams said he supported the policy but worried it could reinforce the bias that already existed in careers advice given to high school students.

“Back at school, it’s still pretty much practice for university in those last two years – pick subjects, pens, pencils, classrooms, exams.

“It’s not quite uni or bust, but it’s definitely university or something [considered] not quite as good as university.”

Nearly a third of people enrolling in trades training already had a university degree and thousands of dollars of debt along with it, he said.

“It’s not wrong that they already have a law degree or whatever, but a few of them do say to us, ‘I wish someone had told me about this at school – I might not have a $60,000 loan right now’.”

READ MORE at RNZ