Fewer and fewer students have been receiving student allowances since 2001 - 23% fewer! (40,434 in the first quarter of 2005, compared with 52,465 for the same period in 2001.)
As if the staggering decline in absolute terms wasn't bad enough, the number of students rose 28% between 2001 and 2004, meaning that the decline in the proportion of students receiving an allowance is actually much higher: 32%!
(This is worked out using mid-year enrolment and allowance data from 2001 and 2004, since the 2005 enrolment numbers are not available yet.)
And as if that wasn't bad enough, Helen said in her Budget speech last year that "for this second term in government we signalled that more students would get student allowances". The number of students receiving allowances has dropped every single year for the past four years.
And as if THAT wasn't bad enough, in the same speech, Helen proudly announced that 36,000 students would benefit from the changes made in the 2004 Budget, including 28,000 who would go from getting nothing to getting something. The changes took effect the beginning of this year, which means that the results should have been seen in the quarterly figures. But instead of 28,000 more students receiving an allowance, it was 3,000 fewer.
Somebody made a boo-boo. A 31,000 boo-boo. And when only 60,958 students got an allowance last year, a 31,000 boo-boo is a pretty fucking big boo-boo, indeed.
Phew. I think that's bad enough now.
Trevor Mallard, who has been on a schmooze mission around India and the Middle-East, was in Riyadh last week. The Government, he says, knew about this trend, and blamed it on the fact that the parental threshold for student allowances (i.e. The amount a student's parents can earn before they stop becoming eligible for an allowance) has been fixed since 1992, and not increased since. Not even to adjust for inflation, which has quietly compounded to 28% between then and now.
The changes in the 2004 Budget (the one that, ahem, benefited 36,000 students) was supposed to fix this. It didn't.
"This is a particular concern and was surprising," said Mallard.
"The forecast that 36,000 students were expected to benefit from the change was based on economic forecasting, and student enrolment behaviour that existed at the time, when the policy changes were made. By its nature, forecasting is not an exact science."
I don't know what kind of tea those economic forecasters were drinking, but if my tealeaves made a prediction that was that much off the mark, I'd change brands.
Then Mallard pulled off a rather impressive piece of rhetorical acrobatics: fewer people are getting student allowances, he said, because Labour has done such a fantastic job of managing the economy.
"As you know our economy has been performing very strongly, and this has raised income levels.
"As incomes have risen during this time, the proportion of parents within these parental income thresholds has fallen, so the number of students qualifying for allowances also fell.
"The rate of fall-off accelerated as the effects of the stronger economy have been felt - as unemployment has gone down and pay has increased, the numbers getting allowances have fallen - despite the increasing numbers in tertiary study."
In a nutshell: Fantabulous Economy overflowing with jobs = more choose to study part-time and work + parents rolling in $$$ = fewer students getting allowances.
It makes perfect sense for explaining why, given a static threshold, the number of students receiving an allowance was going down. What it doesn't explain is why Labour has sat on its ass for four years allowing the numbers to drop each and every year, and why, when it did realise the extent of the decline, it only made token efforts which has had such stupendously little effect.
And now that they know that their solution did sweet bugger-all, are they going to do anything? I guess it's at the stage now that they can't do anything except promise some bling after the election, but given that they managed to do the exact opposite of what they promised last time, it'll have to be a pretty concrete and juicy offer, stapled to someone's chest (i.e. they'll have to publicly and solidly stake their credibility on this) before it'd be taken seriously.
So, Mr Mallard... can I have an interview this week?
Hopefully this story will get some good traction. I linked in all the stats to make it easier for you, Dear MainStream Media. But in case our good friends, the MSM (yeah, you heard me, 27 True Authors of DogBitingMen) forgets to mention it, this is a student media scoop. ASPA. Aotearoa Student Press Association. That's ASPA. Ass-Pa.
Just so you know.