{"id":417998,"date":"2026-05-08T13:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/417998\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T13:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:17:13","slug":"fees-free-university-scheme-to-be-scrapped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/417998\/","title":{"rendered":"Fees-free university scheme to be scrapped"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-element img-responsive file-odt-landscape-large-4-3\" data-delta=\"1\" typeof=\"foaf:Image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-4jtfei6_nicola_willis_10_02_26_1_j.jpg\" width=\"630\" height=\"512\" alt=\"Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ \"\/><\/p>\n<p>Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ <\/p>\n<p>The Finance Minister has confirmed claims by Winston Peters that the fees-free university scheme, which covers the final year of tertiary education study for students, will be scrapped in the upcoming Budget.<\/p>\n<p>The New Zealand First Leader made the comments to Newstalk ZB Friday evening.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement this evening Nicola Willis confirmed the comments.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ongoing coalition negotiations have led to good Budget policy decisions that further the immediate and long-term interests of New Zealanders.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will have more to say about this in due course,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Willis also confirmed that students completing their tertiary studies this year remained eligible for fees-free.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/594688\/fees-free-university-scheme-to-be-scrapped-in-upcoming-budget-nicola-willis-confirms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\"><\/p>\n<p>    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-element img-responsive file-default\" data-delta=\"2\" typeof=\"foaf:Image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/rnz_banner-new.jpg\" width=\"930\" height=\"130\" alt=\"\"\/>  <\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ The Finance Minister has confirmed claims by Winston Peters that the fees-free&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-417998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}