{"id":418071,"date":"2026-05-08T14:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T14:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/418071\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T14:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T14:28:10","slug":"fees-free-university-scheme-to-be-scrapped-in-upcoming-budget-nicola-willis-confirms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/418071\/","title":{"rendered":"Fees-free university scheme to be scrapped in upcoming Budget, Nicola Willis confirms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4JTFEI6_Nicola_Willis_10_02_26_1_jpg.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" alt=\"Bridge\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nNicola Willis said she&#8217;d have more to say on the cut in due course.<br \/>\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Mark Papalii\n<\/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:\/\/radionz.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=211a938dcf3e634ba2427dde9&amp;id=b3d362e693\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nicola Willis said she&#8217;d have more to say on the cut in due course. Photo: RNZ \/ Mark&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-418071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418071","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=418071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}