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Speaker 1: What is in the numbers? I ask you, well known

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Speaker 1: economist Shummerbill ecub He's crunched a few of these figures,

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Speaker 1: it turns out, if you want to see it, being

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Speaker 1: a student, apparently, being a student at university these days

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Speaker 1: is a quote miserable experience. And boy does the media

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Speaker 1: lover story of misery. Here was your headline yesterday, being

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Speaker 1: a student as pricier than ever? Does it payoff? That

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Speaker 1: was your headline. The answer, not from the story, it's

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Speaker 1: from me, is does it payoff? Yes? It does? Yes,

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Speaker 1: if you have a plan, yes, if you're careful, yes,

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Speaker 1: if you're driven in a specific direction professionally. Our most

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Speaker 1: recent graduate at our house is fully immersed in her

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Speaker 1: first job and loving it. She ows a shedload of dough,

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Speaker 1: but wouldn't for a minute have it any other way.

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Speaker 1: But back to the numbers. All we really learn when

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Speaker 1: you compare the cost of stuff from shummer Bill twenty

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Speaker 1: years ago versus the cost of stuff now is well,

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Speaker 1: the cost of stuff has gone up. I mean that's

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Speaker 1: got little to do with university and it's got a

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Speaker 1: lot to do with life. All our bills have gone up,

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Speaker 1: for goodness sake, student support has gone up eighty six percent,

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Speaker 1: but essentials have gone up two hundred and twenty percent.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, the allowance was one hundred

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Speaker 1: and sixty bucks. Essentials we one hundred and forty bucks,

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Speaker 1: so you had twenty bucks left over. These days, you're

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Speaker 1: in the red to the tune of eight dollars, which

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't actually have thought was that bad our. University

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Speaker 1: fees have gone up one hundred and thirteen percent. You

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Speaker 1: might want to ask why, but here's the reality. Checked.

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Speaker 1: The story tells us thirty five thousand students received some

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Speaker 1: form of assistance, right that number on the last quarters,

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Speaker 1: up five percent, but the amount they get is down

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Speaker 1: three percent. So more get money, but not as much.

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Speaker 1: Surely that's good, But here's the real number. How many

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Speaker 1: students are there? While chat Gibt tells me almost four

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand, so less than ten percent get any assistance

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Speaker 1: at all. Ninety percent don't need help. Isn't that the

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Speaker 1: real story? See too many stories, Too many headlines are

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Speaker 1: about what's wrong, not what's right. Who was doing badly

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Speaker 1: not who's doing fine. You can play with numbers forever.

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Speaker 1: Palms to North. Rents have gone up more than Auckland rents.

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Speaker 1: So it's not as cheap to be at Massy as

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Speaker 1: it once was. And so it goes. But the big

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Speaker 1: to the real story surely is what is it you

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Speaker 1: get out of university? What did the qualification do for you?

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Speaker 1: As we've just talked about, if it changed your life,

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Speaker 1: set you on a path, set you up, got you

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Speaker 1: a career, open doors than the bills of material Like life,

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Speaker 1: university is how you see it, Like life, the choices

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Speaker 1: of yours. So does it pay off? Guess what? If

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Speaker 1: you want it to, You're already there. For more from

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Speaker 1: the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news talks. It'd

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