It is indeed a sad state that the training/loan situation has developed into in NZ. As someone who like many others self funded their way through all the training (a fair while ago now) - we didn't have the luxury of being able to have a student loan to do the training with at the time. However, as glekichi says in the post above, given the opportunity most of us would have taken it on a simple mathematical basis, in that firstly it would have lessened the cost of the training, and secondly enabled us to complete the training quicker and thereby be ready to apply for any suitable jobs sooner. The current problems that this has created though of over supply and in some cases sub-standard training and graduates is very much a huge disadvantage of the system. Obviously if it is still to be made available for genuine students, perhaps some more checks and balances are going to have to be put into place in order to improve the quality of the graduates and perhaps to an extent also address the oversupply issues.