Auckland (The NZ Today)
Nurse educators are pushing back against a new direction to limit nursing enrolments, warning the move could make little sense at a time when New Zealand is already under pressure to build a bigger health workforce.
The Tertiary Education Commission has asked providers to keep nursing enrolments around 2025 levels, saying the number of students has grown faster than the system’s ability to provide enough safe, quality clinical placements.
TEC says providers can still take more students if they are able to prove they have enough placement capacity in their region. It is also working with Health New Zealand to identify where more placements could be opened up.
But nursing academics say the restriction risks creating a problem further down the track.
Massey University associate professor Andrea Donaldson raised the issue during Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ visit to the Manawatū campus this week, saying providers had previously been encouraged to grow their nursing programmes and were now suddenly being told to hold numbers back.
She questioned how that fitted with rising demand for healthcare and an ageing population.
Senior lecturer Maree Sheard also argued New Zealand needed to think beyond immediate placement pressures and build a nursing pipeline for the 2030s, 2040s and beyond.
She said hospital placements were not the only option available to nursing students, pointing to primary care, Plunket and other health services as potential training environments.
Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds said nursing enrolments had already climbed significantly, reaching 11,270 in 2025.
The Government’s position is that enrolment growth needs to be matched by enough clinical placement capacity so students can actually complete their qualifications safely and on time.
TEC says the restriction is not necessarily permanent and providers with demonstrated capacity can seek to enrol above the 2025 level.
The debate comes as workforce shortages remain a major issue across hospitals, aged care and community health services.
The Aged Care Association has also criticised the move, saying limiting future nurse numbers because of current placement constraints exposes a wider problem in health workforce planning.
At the same time, the Government has been putting more money into tertiary enrolment growth. Budget 2026 included $234 million for additional enrolments in 2026 and 2027, although that funding is spread across the tertiary sector rather than being dedicated solely to nursing.
Meanwhile, the central question now is whether New Zealand can expand clinical training capacity quickly enough to avoid restricting the very workforce it will increasingly rely on in coming years.
Source: RNZ; Tertiary Education Commission; Aged Care Association.
