Kiwi teachers, nurses and social workers are worse off than people on minimum wages for the first six to 10 years of their careers, largely because of the tens of thousands of dollars they forgo while on unpaid student placements.

And it takes 28 years for midwives to catch up financially with police, who ¨C along with firefighters, prison workers and customs staff ¨C are paid while they train, a new study has found.?

It models the cumulative impacts of a late-20th-century switch from apprenticeship-style training to mandatory university education for teaching, health and care workers in New Zealand. These students spend between 960 and 2,400 hours on placement during their degrees, forfeiting up to NZ$49,726 (?22,586) in earnings they would have pocketed if they received the minimum wage.

Meanwhile, they amass an average of NZ$34,590 in student debt which they must repay at a rate of 12 cents for every dollar earned over a repayment threshold of NZ$24,128.

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The study highlights ¡°the opportunity cost and long-term financial implications¡± of training for education and care professions, the researchers explain in the . ¡°It can take many years or decades before the higher salary outweighs the time spent not earning.¡±

The study was undertaken by Bex Howells, then a master¡¯s student at Victoria University of Wellington, and University of Canterbury mathematician Leighton Watson, who models things from avalanches and volcanic eruptions to the economic costs of sickness.

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Watson said dropout rates among trainee firefighters and police, who generally attract lower salaries than health professionals, were about 2 per cent. By comparison, around 40 per cent of midwifery and social work students abandoned their degrees.

He said policymakers assumed that the ¡°short-term pain¡± of doing unpaid placements while paying fees would be offset by the ¡°long-term financial gains¡± of higher future earnings.

¡°Our work shows that this is not the case. The male-dominated professions with short paid training programmes are much better off financially than the female-dominated professions that require multiple-year unpaid training programmes and long hours of unpaid placements.¡±

New Zealand, like many other countries, is struggling to recruit healthcare workers. The paper cites 2024 shortfalls of 4,800 nurses, 1,050 midwives and 700 social workers ¨C deficits likely to increase as incumbents retire and new recruits prove elusive.

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Governments around the world are being pressured to address such shortages by reinstating paid training. In June 2023, the European Parliament voted to . The following February, a United Nations panel recommended .

Scotland¡¯s longstanding bursary for health students has been for a near-doubling of new nursing enrolments and a tripling of midwifery degree intakes over a decade. From July, many Australian teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students will attract A$319.50 (?161) weekly payments while on placement.

In New Zealand, paid placements are a primary policy goal of a rejuvenated national students¡¯ union. Parliament¡¯s select education and workforce committee is a proposal that the government pay stipends to healthcare, education and social work students, after a initiated by Howells attracted over 20,000 signatures.

Howells said she had completed a master¡¯s thesis on the topic after dropping out of a social work degree because of the unpaid work requirements. ¡°I decided it wasn¡¯t worth risking¡­defaulting on my mortgage to train in a short-staffed profession that would never pay me well enough to recoup the debt from training,¡± she said.

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com