Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds confirmed to Kaitiaki that the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) told nursing schools to cap 2027 student numbers at 2025 levels.
She said the demand came after increasing pressure on clinical placements in Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ (HNZ).
But NZNO student co-leader Josh Lang said the focus should be on increasing the nursing workforce, not decreasing it.
‘If they are going to cap it, it’s going to be hard for us, the future people who want to be nurses, but it’s going to be harder for the whole country.’
“We know we need to increase our domestic workforce so putting the brakes on is just the exact opposite of what we need to be doing now.”
Finding safe and supportive clinical placements was challenging because of understaffing, meaning there weren’t enough senior nurses to support the students on the floor and in primary health.
Lang said the national student unit wanted to see a strong national plan to grow the workforce, particularly Māori and Pacific nurses.
Second-year nursing student at Massey, Catie Lattimore – an NZNO student representative on the campus – said the news was “terrible”.
“My first thought was, ‘that’s disgusting’, what the heck?’” she told Kaitiaki.
Capping nurse numbers would affect the entire public health system, warned Lattimore, who is also NZNO’s national student vice-chair.
“About the future, it makes me scared because, honestly, if they are going to cap it, it’s going to be hard for us, the future people who want to be nurses, but it’s going to be harder for the whole country,” she said.
The health system was already under huge pressure – this would make things so much worse, she warned.
“If they’re going to cap nurses at the source, our health system is going to go down the drain,” she said. “Where are they going to get the nurses from? Are they going to try and buy people from other countries?
Northland nurse and academic Pipi Barton said the current Government was trying to keep a cap on the health budget — the nursing workforce being its biggest expenditure. “So they’re trying to save money where-ever they can, basically.”
Barton said she had been hearing from nurses on the floor that they were feeling overworked. “So yes, having less staff does add pressure and can mean staff are reluctant to take students due to workload pressures.”
Given a global shortage of nurses, decisions like this to cap student numbers completely contradicted World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations for governments to invest in domestic nursing workforces.
“By capping and limiting the numbers that can come through and do their training, is capping the domestic workforce.” Eras of austerity such as in the 1990s, which limited the domestic workforce, only created cycles of spiking international recruitment to fill vacancies, she said.
Meanwhile, Barton said there would only be more people applying to study nursing, as a career with less impact from AI. “And it makes sense, because that’s where the need is, but the Government’s not thinking about that — they’re just thinking about austerity and trying to save money.”
Tightened caps on student numbers increased competition for places — “and again Māori and Pasifika will end up on the back foot”.
“There will be higher expectations on who gets in and who doesn’t, just like medical school . . . if you look at the history and there’s this structural discrimination that occurs within education, within tertiary education, particularly within nursing.”
Kaitiaki has been tracking the shortfall in HNZ jobs for new graduates over the past few years. In that time the number of new graduates finding jobs in the ACE scheme has been barely reaching 50 per cent. Despite promises of more jobs, the number of roles has struggled to keep up with the number of graduates.
It comes alongside increasing pressure on nursing staff with the workforce only growing by 54 fulltime equivalent roles since the Coalition Government got its feet under the desk.
‘So yes, having less staff does add pressure and can mean staff are reluctant to take students due to workload pressures.’
NZNO primary health care college chair Tracey Morgan said at a time when the primary health care, hospitals, aged care and Māori and iwi health-care providers were crying out for nurses, the new mandate made no sense.
“This new directive from the TEC to train fewer nursing students is counter-intuitive to what Aotearoa desperately needs in a health system in crisis.”
Meanwhile, Lattimore said she was very proud of Massey nursing staff for speaking out on the plan, which otherwise might have remained a secret.
Associate professor Andrea Donaldson, who revealed the order, was one of Lattimore’s lecturers, she said. “It broke at Massey, damn!”
Not enough capacity
Kaitiaki contacted Health Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Health Minister Matt Doocey for comment, but was referred to Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds.
Simmonds confirmed TEC gave nursing schools guidance to “generally align their 2027 nursing enrolments with 2025 levels”. This was based on advice from HNZ about the availability of clinical placements, she said.
Schools would have to consult with their HNZ district chief nurse to agree on appropriate clinical placement volumes. This meant proposed enrolment increases could still be considered if there was placement capacity in that region, she said.
Some regions already had limits imposed on 2026 enrolments based on placement capacity, Simmonds said.
She said nursing enrolments were up from 8696 in 2019, to 11,910 so far this year.