Nurse educators say a government directive to limit nurse enrolments makes "no sense" as pressure builds on the workforce.
The Tertiary Education Commission wrote to educators in early October asking them to limit enrolments to 2025 levels because there was not enough room for extra student nurses to complete clinical placement.
It comes as concerns about hospital staffing grow louder and election-year battles rage on between Labour and National over how many nurses have been hired.
"Growth in nursing enrolments over the last few years has put pressure on clinical placement capacity across all Health NZ districts," TEC delivery deputy chief executive Gillian Dudgeon said.
"TEC has asked tertiary providers to manage enrolments within 2025 numbers, to ensure quality clinical placements that are safe and so learners have the best chance of completing their qualification."
Dudgeon said TEC was working with Health NZ on opportunities to increase capacity, where possible.
"Tertiary education providers may increase enrolments if they can demonstrate available clinical capacity in their district," she said.
Massey University associate professor Andrea Donaldson raised the problem with Labour leader Chris Hipkins during his visit to the Manawatū campus this week.
She said the directive to restrict enrolments made no sense given current workforce pressures and an ageing population.
"Who's going to care for them?" she said.
"Earlier in the year, the Tertiary Education Commission came in and were like, 'grow your programmes, grow your programmes, grow your programmes', and now suddenly last week [they said] 'no, no, nursing needs to cap their numbers at 2025 levels', and we're like, what? Why?"
Demand for nursing courses was high and they would now be forced to enrol considerably fewer nurses than planned, Donaldson said.
Her colleague, senior lecturer Maree Sheard, said the demand for nurses would only increase.
"So we just really need to make sure that New Zealand's ready for that, and I don't feel that some of these fiscal decisions are thinking long term," she said.
"We need to be forecasting and being really careful about gradually growing the workforce for increasing population demand. So irrespective of what we're facing now, in the immediate 2030 year, we need to be thinking about 2040 and 2050, and having a sustainable nursing pipeline."
Sheard said nurses could get placements outside Health NZ and hospitals - with Plunket, or within primary healthcare, for example - so she did not buy the argument that a squeeze on Health NZ placements should result in capped enrolments.
Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds said nursing enrolments had increased significantly in recent years, reaching 11,270 enrolments in 2025.
She repeated the TEC's explanation for the limit and said it was not new for all providers: "with some providers having been asked to manage availability of clinical placements for the second consecutive year."
Health NZ has been approached for comment.
