1 CURIOUS MUSIC For years we've been told that going to university is the key to success, and more than half of our young people are now looking for a tertiary qualification. But is it the best choice? Will study always lead to a job? Is student debt too much of a burden? In the long run, does the investment pay off? It's one of the most important decisions of our lives, and we ask kids to make it at 17. Is a university qualification really worth it? 'THE HARD STUFF' THEME Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016. MYSTERIOUS MUSIC When I left high school, I didn't really stop to ask myself any big questions. I just went off to university because that was a way out of the small town that I was living in. The question I should've asked myself, though, is, 'What would make me happy?' Now, the answer's going to be different for everyone. It could be a job you're passionate about, becoming rich, doing good deeds or raising a family. But it's one of the most important questions you should ask yourself, because it can set the path for your entire adult life. So at the age of 17 or 18, we're asking people with very little job experience and very little life experience to make a decision that's going to affect the entire course of the rest of their lives. Are they ready to do that? For me, to be just a bit unsure is` it is a bit nerve-racking, definitely. I wanna do civil engineering at Auckland University. When I leave high school I'm planning to study, um, beauty therapy. I'm only 16, so I shouldn't really have to know what I wanna do, and I don't know yet. I'm 90% sure that going to university is the right choice for me. In the future, I want to become a police officer. Well, I'm kind of just taking a shot in the dark, really. It's hard to generalise about the right way to get a job. Everybody's journey is unique. For example, Thomas here is tossing up between becoming an actor or a psychiatrist. His dad is pretty keen on the latter. If you didn't have to decide now, if you could put that decision off for a bit, would you want to? Well, yeah. I find that there's a big problem with making students disg` decide on their careers in high school. Like, I get that there has to be a point where you make this decision, and it has to be early on so you can have that kind of lifestyle and work towards it, but, honestly, teenagers, we're not the best at making decisions. We do stupid things. What about your friends? How many of them are going to university? Basically everyone I know is going to university. It's just become, like, pretty much how life goes at the moment. You go to a primary school, you go intermediate, you go to high school, then after high school, you either go to university or you do something else, but that something else isn't really something that gets touched on. At school so far, all we've been trained to do is to go to university. When I leave school, I want to study accounting and business. I'm still undecided of which uni I want to go to. I what to be a chartered accountant in the future. Seaview was the first in her family to head off to university. The government belief is if we can get more people to achieve higher qualifications, then the country will do better economically. So most of my family members are working in a factory, and they always complain when they come home ` how they have sore legs. They're, like, saying that, um, 'You don't know how it feels to be out there working our butt off just to get something on the plate.' So I wanted to do something different. And I'm getting more money than that. I've been looking at the wages and salaries. I know it's a lot of work, but I'm challenging myself to do it. But what about the big picture? Well, if we take 18- to 24-year-olds, 20% are unemployed. 24% are working, while just over half are doing some form of tertiary education. And that number keeps climbing every year. But why are so many of them going off to do a certificate, diploma or degree? RELAXED MUSIC Degrees, I think, for the vast majority of people, are exceptionally valuable things to aspire to do. They set people up to` to migrate into the` into the workforce, to, uh, learn about themselves in a safe environment for, you know, a number of years where they can experiment and fail and try different things. And I think, you know, most people that have done them would say that they are really valuable to them in the long run. RELAXED MUSIC But can we actually quantify the advantage? There's been a lot of research trying to figure that out. So what does the data actually say about the benefits of completing a degree? If you look at the overall picture internationally, there are four or five benefits. So the most obvious one is the salary increase. So you will get a higher salary if you are a degree holder than of somebody who has finished their formal education in high school. It also says that your peak income will occur later. So if you've not got a degree, you'll reach your highest income of your career quite early; if you've got a degree, you'll reach that later. And that contributes, of course, to the impact on total income. Uh, it tells you that unemployment will be lower. The data tells us that, uh, you will tend to have better health outcomes. And the final thing it tells us is that you will be more engaged as a member of society. BELLS CHIME Cos there were no fees when I was a student, I could spend some time figuring out what I wanted to do. So I started here at Otago University wanting to be a philosopher, which lasted all of 30 seconds into my first lecture. Then I did zoology, because I really loved nature documentaries, and marine science in the hope that it would get me to the Antarctic, which it didn't. Then I changed tack and came up here to Auckland University, where I spent another four years completing the clinical psychology programme. Along the way, I clocked up three degrees and a post-graduate diploma. It took me a decade to figure out what I wanted to do. Rory McCourt, the former president of the Students' Association, is a little envious of the way it was for me. Well, that sounds great. Unfortunately, we can't do those kind of things today. There's continuous assessment, which means people have things due all the time. They've constantly got to be studying, cramming, doing assignments. Uh, most students have jobs these days. Some have unpaid internships. It seems a lot more stressful. Like, for these guys, there's a lot more things to be worried about and stressed about and think about. Yeah. There's all of that, and the ticking time bomb of your own debt that's clocking up. So students have a lot to be stressed about. There's no room for failure. There's no room for working things out any more. It's really high-stakes for a student today. Today the decision to go to university is no longer just about what you want to become or where your passion lies ` for many, it's become a financial decision. You have to take out student loans cos you're living away from home. So I'm kind of hoping to get scholarships and things like that. I'm going for a scholarship, and if I don't get that, it'll be really hard. I feel that what I want to do at university will help me come out the other side and pay off my debts reasonably quickly with a stable career. I haven't actually really thought about the financial side yet. Um, I know it's a lot of money. JAUNTY MUSIC I started at Otago University in 1985, and the money aspect never even crossed my mind. When I went o university, we were paid a living allowance of $4,000 a term, which meant that because I didn't like the food at my hostel very much, we came into town and ate out a lot. And when I flatted here, I even bought myself a little 50cc motorbike for the commute to university ` even though it was, uh, just across the road. ENGINE REVS And, crazily, I even bought a $750 classical guitar, which (INHALES SHARPLY) I was meant to learn to play (STRUMS GUITAR) but never really did. What I want to know is how much my 10 years of study would set me back if I tried to do it today. Hannah August is currently researching how much a degree is worth. Well, you had nine years at university total, so in terms of your fees, uh, today that would have come to a total of about $63,000 for your fees. In terms of where you lived while you were studying, uh, we're looking here. So this is just your cost for your rent, actually. Not even looking at, sort of, transport or food costs. That's a total of about $58,000 over the nine years. And if you needed course-related costs while you were studying, so maybe you need to pay for a computer or for field trips or something like that, that's, uh` if you borrowed the maximum each year, that's a grand each year, so that's about $9,000. Total of $130,000. So if I did my degrees now, it would've cost me $130,000? That's just for your fees and your rent and your course-related costs. Presumably you needed to eat as well. A little. How long would it take me to pay that off? So you're a qualified clinical psychologist, uh, they earn an average salary of 70 grand, uh, each year. So, at that salary, you'd be paying off about $8,500 each year, uh, for just over 15 years. 15 years? So I finished at 28. I would've been 43 by the time I paid off that student loan. Yup. Whoa. I'm from a generation that was very fortunate, but everything started to change in 1989 when student tuition fees were introduced. And unless you get a full scholarship or work while studying, you will get into debt. The only question is ` how much? CURIOUS MUSIC Four out of five tertiary students have student debt. And those people now collectively owe the NZ government $15 billion. Is that the way we want our young people to start out in life? How affordable is university for young people these days? It terms of the fees, we can slap it all on a loan, so that's not really a consideration. Although we do see, on the margins, particularly people who are Maori or Pasifika or come from low-income families like mine, um, they think really hard about whether to take on that debt, even if it is interest-free, right? Because the experience that you've had with debt is typically bad. It's loan sharks; it's credit cards. It's not a mortgage, right? You don't have debt that is investment. So you don't think about clocking up debt for your degree as an investment. You think about it as` as, kind of, consumer debt. In terms of when we leave university, um, there's huge impacts. So people delay having children, we know. They delay buying houses. They buy different kind of properties. And it's, you know, economic, um, lunacy to think that people aren't impacted by their debt. The average student debt is now $24,000, and two-thirds of students say their debt will affect their ability to buy a house. A third say it'll affect their decision to have children. But there is some good news. Making student loans interest-free has dramatically decreased the burden, and we also need to remember that, on average, students are only being billed for about a third of the cost of their degree. The government, on behalf of the people of the country, wants our citizens ` mostly young people but not all ` to be better educated because that will make them better citizens. It will give them all those benefits. And so most governments around the world have a view that it is in the public interest for them to pay a part of that cost. Are your generation more comfortable with debt? I think we are... painfully apathetic towards it. We ignore it because it's easier. Um, we put our IRD invoices, slips into the rubbish as soon as we get them, cos we don't want to look at our loan balance. This is a thing we have to do to get out the other side to get a job and start paying off whatever the number is at the end. We're just not thinking about it. Liz is in the final year of her medical degree. What's your personal student debt? So every year of study is $15,000 at medical school. By the time I finish, I'll come out with $90,000, plus $10,000 of course-related costs, so that's about $100,000 loan when I finish. Fees ` good thing? Not so good? Oh, I think in a medical degree, I think the fees are appropriate for the amount of education that we're receiving, and the government subsidises a lot of our study already. And the fact that we're guaranteed jobs, uh, is a fantastic, um` yeah, a fantastic reason for us to be able to take that debt on with some certainty. How long will it take you to pay that off? On average, it takes five years for a medical student ` or medical graduate ` to pay back their loan. A medical degree is one of the best to get from an economic perspective. After five years, graduates are earning, on average, more than $100,000. But degrees are not created equal. Someone who got a performing arts degree will be earning pretty much the same as someone who hasn't got a degree at all. The decision on whether to become a doctor or a dancer is obviously up to the individual, and the tertiary institutions will always try to meet student demand, irrespective of the number of jobs available. At the moment, university degree courses seem to be` you know, the demand's driven by students. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Overall it's a good thing, but what you want is those students to be informed. So you don't want just saying, 'Hey, I like drama. I'll go to drama courses.' That's fine, so long as they understand that if you do that, you're not likely to be paid very well, and maybe you wanna be paid more than that, and so you might make a different choice. I mean, groups like the police, they know what they want. If they need more police, they have an intake. They get a 120 more policemen come through. Why can't we do that with everything? Why can't we just say, 'We need this many more of these people?' Well, the police is a particular issue, of course. That's one particular organisation training. So you've got to go through the Police College in order to be a policeman. Most organisations aren't like that. Even nurses, there's no one hospital, there's no one employer. Lawyers, there's no one employer. So you just can't get that precise, and in fact, you don't want to be that precise. Kids might want to be a nurse even though there's not necessarily many jobs for nurses in NZ. They might decide to take that skill to Australia. And because we're a democracy, we can guide them a little bit, we can try and help them make those right choices, but if they do wanna make a choice that says, 'I wanna be a nurse even if there's not many jobs for nurses,' I think we should be very cautious about saying, 'No, we're now going to require you to be a plumber.' I'm not sure that I want to live in a NZ that does that. Informing students is a vital ingredient in making sure the country as a whole is getting value from tertiary qualifications. To this end, the government has built the Occupation Outlook app, which has information on 60 key careers. It tells you if there's a shortage of workers, the level of training that you'll need and the kind of pay that you can expect. There are always more people studying law than there are possible jobs in the law profession. Christine earned herself a law degree in 2014, but after applying for 30 or 40 jobs unsuccessfully, she ended up taking a job in IT. Did you know when you started your law degree that there were more law graduates than there were law jobs? I had heard about that ` that the number of people of graduating every year, um, was more than the number of jobs available on the market, um, yup. And that didn't influence your decision at all? Uh, no. I guess I was still very hopeful that it wouldn't really impact upon me. Yeah. So is there a lesson in all of that for you? I feel that when I started university, I thought I would study my degree, graduate, get a job, and for me, there was no other alternative plan. I didn't think that I would ever end up in a non-law-related job. And, I guess, um, for a long time afterwards, when I did graduate and I hadn't gotten a job, I did feel quite disheartened at the fact that I wasn't where I thought I would be. And I think that, um, the takeaway message from that is that there is no one right way or path to go once you've finished your degree or whatever you end up doing. Um, if you do end up getting a job in the field that you studied in, then that's great, but if you don't, then it's not the be-all, end-all. Um, life is going to take you on lots of twists and turns, and, I guess, that at the end of the day, that's all going to be OK. # I was running down the street, just screaming, 'I was blind,' # but I lost my voice, like I lost my mind... # Supergroove had a number one hit with this song in 1994. They split up after two albums, and lead singer Karl Steven decided to go to university to study philosophy. Cos you were walking away from a career in music,... Yeah. ...which was paying you quite well, to study philosophy. Yeah. I would imagine a lot of people thought that was mad. I'm sure they would've if I'd been, uh, speaking with them, but, um` I mean, we sometimes think of a degree as a bit like, uh, a police badge or something. It's like, 'I have a degree, so that will just open doors for me 'and behind the doors will be all this money,' um, you know? The other way to look at a degree is... it's that experience of reading all that stuff and attending all those lectures and writing those, uh, assignments and getting the feedback on them, and all that, I think, changes who you are as a person. It certainly did for me. After a decade of studying, including a stint at Cambridge University, Dr Karl Steven is back to making music. I mean, how do you apply your, kind of, university studies to your working life? I don't 'use my degree' in the police badge sense, you know? I don't say to people when I am about to some, you know, film or TV music, 'I have a degree.' Um, it doesn't really come up. I mean` But the contents of my experience, um, does come up. I understand storytelling, um, as it applies in film and TV, better because of, um, yeah, being lucky enough to do that university stuff. The irony, though, now is that universities, the focus is really all about the money. It's funny the way we tally it up. I mean, we don't tally up the amount in total we've spent on food in our lives. You know, 'Oh! I've spent $100,000 on salami in my life!' But we do do it with education as though education is kind of an investment that's meant to pay off. I don't see education in that way. For me, just doing it paid off instantly. I mean, it's, uh` It's a different kind of riches, I guess. Um, it's not money, but it's better than money to me. CLASSICAL MUSIC So university can simply be for self-improvement, and we also know that, on average, the tertiary educated will earn more than those without a degree. But what about those that don't want to go to university? Is there a pathway to success or are they doomed to a lifetime of lower-paying jobs? 1 CURIOUS MUSIC If only half of our young people are doing some kind of tertiary education, what about the other half? How do we prepare those kids to have a successful future? None of my family members have been to uni. So I just don't feel like I should go to uni. I don't` I don't see myself as a uni student. No one's really talked to me about apprenticeships exactly. It's been more about courses and more uni-ish things. I am looking forward to working. I get to get my own money and help out with my parents and my other family members. There is an expectation that if you're smarter, you go to university; if you're not smart, you don't go to university and you do a trade or something. But I believe that's just a stereotype and people should not believe in that, because that's not true. There's a lot of smart people out there that don't go to university, and there's a lot of less-smart people that do go to university. The trades and services are meaningful work, satisfying work, um, thoroughly necessary work. You know, these are jobs that make sure our towns and cities and farms, um, run and operate, and they're also rewarding jobs and rewarding careers. Cos there is this, kind of, educational snobbery, isn't there? You know, I mean, we do have this thing that degrees are success, and trades, not as successful. Trades are, like, you know` if you're not good enough for a degree you do trades, which is a bizarre, kind of snobby idea. That university pathway, it does` it dominates what goes on in the senior high school. I mean, you know, there's lots of schools doing great stuff, but it` it does dominate a lot of the debate around education. You know, when there's new policy announcements, people immediately focus on, 'What does this mean for universities?' And for some kids, why should they head off to uni when there's a desperate shortage of workers in lots of industries? If you look at the construction industry as an example, you know, we have got a massive need in the next 20 years, um, for all types of trades, but that message isn't getting through to students at college and school level. Schools do have programmes to help kids find out more about jobs that don't necessarily need degrees. Through his school's Gateway programme, Tom is doing a course in forklift driving with real-world experience. Tom, how have you found school? What's school been like? School's been pretty hard. You know, it's tough at times. Can be a bit boring sometimes. Tell me about your Gateway programme. So my Gateway course, I do forklift driving. I do it from Monday to afternoon, every Mondays. And I'm basically loading pallets on the trucks or unloading them. Uh, a bit of paperwork, but it's not too much of a hassle. And do you think it's a good system, the Gateway system? I reckon it's a good idea. You know, um, people get more experience. Like, even though you're not getting paid for it, there's the experience for your, you know` for your CV. Every young person's going to the workforce. Every young person deserves the opportunity to actually understand how their learning at school relates to those possibilities in industry, and actually trying things out's really important. One great example ` in the emergency-management sector, they built a little course. They took around 17 learners, range of abilities, and they said, 'How many of you think you'd want to work in the emergency services?' And I think about three of them said yes. They were like, 'Ugh.' You know, difficult situations, horrific scenes. 'No, thanks. Someone else can do that.' So they took them out for a week ` mountain rescue, fire service, helicopter rescue, paramedics. End of the week, 'How many of you think that you'd like to have a career in the emergency services?' 15 out of 17 said yes. So what we're talking about here is young people seeing stuff, cos they only know what they know. Josh wanted to show me another pathway. When you finish school, the apprenticeship is once again an option. So, Josh, I mean, I had thought that apprenticeships were kind of a thing of the past in NZ, but...? No, not at all. Apprenticeships are back. Um, in the 1980s, the, kind of, heyday of time-served apprenticeships, there were about 25,000 apprentices a year. There was a large reform in the early '90s, got down to about 16,000. Today ` 41,000 apprentices. This company will be taking another apprentice next week and 12 this year. Apprentices at Cable Price can even take courses at an in-house training facility. Why do you have to run a separate training facility? The reason is our own products that we offer to the market are very complex, very expensive. So we have to do specialised training on our product alone, because there are differences between every manufacturer, and doing a course at tertiary level is only generic, and they can't offer all the specialist knowledge, all the specialist equipment that we can. So the people who come into your training centre get specialised knowledge in a highly technical area, and they don't pay fees, and they don't have a student loan. Correct. And apprenticeships can lead to the dream job. Julius Bloem loves racing cars, and to him it made no sense to go to university. Julius, how'd you go in high school? I, sort of, couldn't be bothered with it, and` and I did the absolute bare minimum to pass. Um, just my focus wasn't there, and I didn't have` I didn't have the drive to succeed, because I didn't really know what I wanted to do so, um, I just didn't do anything. The only thing in my entire life that I was really interested in was cars. Julius, do you think the apprenticeship system is a good system? I think it's a really good system that needs to be considered more often. Um, and I think it's so good that I've actually started helping kids get into apprenticeships. Um, there's a really big disconnect between, um, schools and training organisations and employers, and` and there's these kids coming out of school that know they wanna do an apprenticeship, but they have no idea where to go, and there's a massive lack of support. So I try and help them take the steps and guide them toward the employers through my own, sort of, network that I've developed. So this is out engine room. Uh, as you can see, there's a lot of engine parts there ` engine blocks, turbos, cam shafts. It's interesting, because, I mean, I look at that thing that schools do, which is, kind of, there's university, and everybody who can't go to university should do trades, but then whenever I come into a place like this and I look around, this is super comple` the only thing I understand in this entire room is a cable tie. Like, I look at this and go, 'OK, that's a cable tie.' I understand that. But, like, this is super complicated, technical stuff. Mm. It's very advanced, and, um, people that do this stuff, in our workshop, at least, have had to train for between five and 10 years to be able to, um, be given the opportunity to build engines in an environment like this. Julius has bought a house with his girlfriend, Ashleigh. She finished her university degree a year ago. So what did you do at university? Um, I studied a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in marketing, management, psychology, and film and television media. So, Ashleigh, how much` how much is your student loan? It was about maybe 26 grand, and it's gone down a little bit since I've been working for nearly a year. So when it came to buying the house, uh, so, Ashleigh, you had the` still had the huge loan, and so you'd be contributing a little bit more, Julius? In fact, you were making money all they way through your training programme. Yeah. I came out of my apprenticeship with` with a reasonable way to house deposit in my back pocket. So if you'd both gone to university, you would have been a fair way off buying a house. Yup. Yeah, that's definitely correct. I think it's a real advantage that, um, I had the backing of a trade so I could save the money to afford a house. We often assume a degree is going to fast track you to success, but at just 23, Julius is in his dream job working with rally cars. What's more, though, he's recently been appointed general manager of the company. He's a success, which raises the big question ` is going to university for some simply putting an actual career on hold and getting yourself into debt? CURIOUS MUSIC We have this assumption that going to university is always going to be better than not going. But is that true? Could real-world experience trump having a degree? If you have two people going for a job, two kids going for a job, one of them's got a degree, one doesn't, who gets the job? Is it always the kid with the degree? That's a good question. It depends on the level of experience that they have. If you have a degree, um, and the other individual doesn't have a degree, and the level of experience is the same, then you're always going to take the individual with the degree. Yeah? So it's just another tool to put in your toolbox. But if you've got a degree and the person without the degree has a significant level of experience, then it changes. The rules change. Then employers, and even myself as an employer, will look at going for the person with the relevant experience, where I can validate that experience. I sort of call it the five A's. Um, you need attitude, you know, good attitude, good strong attitude. Um, aptitude, the ability to pick and learn things relatively quickly. Um, a level or, um, ambition and desire in terms of what you're looking to do. Aspiration. You know, you're wanting to improve and do better. And the biggie ` attendance. You gotta keep showing up day in, day out because that actually` Attendance, oddly enough, is the biggie for most employers. So what's interesting is your five A's have nothing to do with degrees. They are about personal attributes and qualities. Yeah, they are. They're personal attributes and qualities and, um, there's a` there's a massive movement overseas, um, looking at those qualities, um, above a degree. So, you know, there's a real value that's coming from that life experience ` the school of hard knocks, so to speak. CURIOUS MUSIC I love coming into all of these rooms, cos you just kind of turn up, and it's like a kid in a candy store. Some companies in NZ are also taking this approach to finding the very best workers. Ian Taylor runs a globally successful animation company out of Dunedin. He's got a law degree but has never been a lawyer. Ian, what are the skills and attributes that you're looking for when people apply for jobs here? The last thing I ask anybody to do is show me their degrees. You know, we sit, we talk. Um, I ask them to show me stuff. You know? And you pick it up in the enthusiasm with which they show you. I like to know that they've actually gone and done something, and I love the people who come through` You know, the people who come through who don't have any educa` any tertiary education that come through I find the most interesting, because I just want to find out, 'So how did you learn about this? How did you do that? 'How did you do this?' Because those answers are wha` that kind of thinking is what I need here, because the problems we throw at people, um, you don't learn at a university. You've got figure out how to find the answers. This is the bit I love. The shed. In the man shed out the back. So... that's one of the drones that we have. There's some software being done here. Over here's another drone. There's the, um, 3D printer. So they used the first 3D printer to make the second 3D printer to make the third 3D printer, and I never even knew we had the first one. (LAUGHS) This is where I reckon it's about thinkers, not people with degrees. One of the things that worries me, I speak, you know, at, um, school prize-givings, and it` it never ceases to amaze me how proud the teachers up there seem to be because this huge percentage of kids gets up and says, 'And I'm going to university.' 'And I'm going to university.' Why are these kids leaving school thinking that natural next step is university? Great. I'm good to go when you guys are. And for some ` like Jake Miller, an entrepreneur ` a degree seems almost pointless. Fittingly, his first job after leaving school was creating a website helping people to decide what to do after leaving school. Cool. So I will do a quick intro, and then we'll get into it. Are you picking up that third today? He sold it to the government for an undisclosed sum and now runs a site focusing on business education. Hi. My name is Jake Miller, publisher of Unfiltered and you're on the Game Changer Series. But back when he was at school, Jake was offered and declined a law scholarship. Great to meet you, Gavin. Thank you, Jake. Pleasure to meet you. Yeah. Thank you so much for making the time for us. I really appreciate it. Cos the conventional advice, I guess, most parents would give is, 'Look, do the law thing. Get ya qualification. Do the business thing after that. 'You know, get yourself sorted first.' But that clearly wasn't your view. Not at all. No. When I was in high I remember at one point distinctively wanting to go over, move to NASA and become an astronaut, and then at other times I wanted to be an airline pilot, and I even went solo to get towards doing that. Um, wanted to follow Dad into skydiving, and then probably for the most part wanted to be a lawyer, um, have a successful, um, probably criminal or commercial law career, and then maybe get into politics one day. And then I started reading Richard Branson's autobiography Losing My Virginity, focused on his business journey, and I was just like, 'Man, I've gotta give this a go.' So after that, the decision became much clearer. I decided that I no longer had any interest in getting into politics or law or corporate business and just wanted to do my own thing, and that's when I really got started. Where do you think the pressure comes from to go to university? Is it` Is it young people themselves? Is it parents? Is it school? I think parents are conditioned to believe that university is going to provide the best for their children, and they obviously want the best for their children, so they will, I guess, pressure their sons and daughters into going to university. I think there's a real argument out there that people say today it's more necessary than it used to be. However, I've got a strong belief that there are only two things you need in order to be successful today, and probably in any age, and that is skills ` so an ability to do something, one thing really, really, really well ` and then connections, networks or friendships within that space who can help you, um, I guess, turn that skill into a career or help you get jobs. I think that people like Jake, degree or not, are always going to succeed. But what about those not in education, not in employment and not in training? 1 MYSTERIOUS MUSIC One in five young people are unemployed. Astonishingly, that's three times higher than the national average. We know that getting them back into education or a job is going to benefit them personally, but it would also save the country $300 million a year. If $300 million is, you know, basically invested in keeping people unemployed, then that is a major problem. How long do they tend to stay unemployed for? If, um, someone leaves school without an education and they're on the unemployment benefit within three months to four months of leaving ` so they don't find employment ` then, on average, they're on a benefit for more than 18 years. I mean, that's` that's` that's incredible. STRIVE is a community trust that works on getting those not in education, employment or training ` they're called NEETs ` back into the system. These are the people that dropped out of school with no qualifications and for whom, according to the statistics, have a lifetime on a benefit to look forward to. For many of our families out here, their children are just not interested in education, so, you force them there, they're just going to distract everyone else. So NEET, and reengaging NEET, is about basically giving them a second chance and doing it a different way, cos if something doesn't work, why do we keep doing it? What are the main problems when it comes to getting these young people into a job? OK. That's easy. One of the major problems, um, of getting our young people into employment is drugs. Because many of our employers, and probably for all the right reasons, have a nil tolerance to drug taking, whether it be cannabis or synthetic drugs or whatever. Which means that if employers have a nil tolerance for drugs, it would be almost impossible to get these kids into jobs unless you had employers who were actually willing to be a little bit flexible in that. Absolutely. Absolutely. They're all gonna end up, you know` that we're going to pay for them forever and a day. Don't anyone think it's only one or two that are out there doing it. The reality is it's 80%. OK. So what do you wanna do this year? What are your goals? Um, this year it would probably be to go back to study in second semester to get my bachelor's in social services. Yup. STRIVE's method is labour-intensive one-on-one, because that's what it takes. Martha now has a social work diploma, is currently doing some volunteer work and looking for a full-time job. Martha, tell me how school went for you. Things were going great. I think it was my first year, year nine, was one of the greatest years of high school. But then I mixed with the wrong friends so, yeah, it was kind of... My mum was right ` choose your friends wisely. And I didn't really pay attention to that. If I asked you're teachers when you were in high school, 'What kind of kid is Martha?' Were you, like, a bad kid? What would they have said? (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS) She never comes to class! (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS) 'We don't know if she's a bad kid; we never see her.' 'We never saw her!' That's what they would say. They'd be like, 'Oh, we've only seen her, like, twice in one week.' (LAUGHS) Other than that... So if I'd talked to you at the end of high school and I went, 'So, Martha, what is the future? 'What do you think your future will be?' What would you have said back then? I would've said, 'I don't have a clue.' I have no idea what my future would've been like. And it's weird, like, looking back then and then seeing how my life is now. I could've never imagined my life to be how it is right now. Yeah. Martha is in the process of turning around her life with a tertiary qualification. But there's bad news for those that are still unemployed ` more and more jobs are disappearing from the bottom of the ladder every day. Now, technology has taken away a number of roles that normally your entry-level individuals who are semi-skilled or have got very limited skills can actually go and do. All right? So those are starting to disappear fairly quickly, so the` the skill level for an entry-level point into an organisation has started to increase. So that's a big challenge, right? So you need to be able to, um, create a platform where those who have been out of school for a number of years are going to be inspired to actually want to start learning and developing again. Now, I will guarantee you this ` in three years' time, if we're seeing an economy develop like we think it will, with a lot of investment in construction, infrastructure, those type of things, you'll start to see a lot more organisations engaging with youth to get them on board, to on-board them, to provide greater levels of training and to provide greater incentives to have them employed. You know? And I know talking a lot about the construction industry, but the reason we are is because there's something like 53,000 new jobs are going to be created across NZ over the next three years in the area. We have 36,000 to 37,000 unemployed 15- to 24-year-olds. So it doesn't take a math genius to think that, 'We have a pool of talent available there. 'How do we create a gateway to get them from there into these roles and into these jobs?' But that's an incredibly hard thing to do. Although STRIVE have turned around hundreds of lives, they can only do it one person at a time. How do you help a young person who's` who's a NEET to` to` to not be a NEET? How do you get them out of that? It's all about that transition support, individual support, letting them know that there is another bus, that we all fail at something some time in our lives. It's about instilling hope. Them working and contributing not only lifts their self-esteem and their mana, but they are able then to financially help their families, who are normally on the lowest incomes, and feel good about that. So that in itself is a great thing. But you change the face of not just an individual or a family ` whole communities. When whole communities and whole streets are unemployed, then you have whole streets that are, it's not hard to see the difference. People's dign` People lift their heads and can look at you in the eye because they feel they're contributing and they have a sense of value. And I think that's why, you know, for our organisation, for me personally, I think the job changes lives. So how important do you think organisations like STRIVE are when it comes to helping young people who` that school doesn't work for them? I think it's extremely important. I mean, you know, being brought up, kids are taught, 'Oh, school's the only` the only way to go up.' There's no other way. That's what kids` That's what, now, kids are taught, you know. But there is an alternative education out there; they just don't know it. Do you still see people from that old life? I do see a lot of people from that life that I use` that I almost was a part of, and, um, I look at it, and I'm just like, 'Wow. That could've been me.' We currently have a huge focus on getting young people into tertiary education because we know, on the whole, that's going to be better for the economy and for the individual. But here's the thing ` some people get caught up in this wave who shouldn't be there, and they get swept off to university when it may not be the best option for them. I think we need to be doing a better job of putting all the options in front of young people, because having a degree is not the only way to be successful. There is no single right choice; there are many. So get informed, pick a path that you feel excited about and you're interested in, and just get on with it.