New Zealand is facing growing calls to scrap what critics call "ageist" student loan policies that prevent older people from accessing tertiary education in an increasingly challenging job market.

The policies limit student loan eligibility based on age, effectively cutting off educational opportunities for people over 55 who want to retrain or upskill as industries change and jobs disappear.

One borrower told The Spinoff: "I feel like I have no future." The person, in their late 50s, lost their job in a sector being decimated by automation and found themselves blocked from accessing student loans to retrain.

Mate, here's the bind: New Zealand tells older workers they need to keep working longer - the retirement age is already 65 and there's talk of raising it. But when those workers try to retrain for new careers, the system says they're too old.

The policy was originally designed to limit student loan costs to taxpayers. The logic: older borrowers are less likely to repay their loans before retirement, when incomes typically drop.

But that logic is increasingly outdated. People are living and working longer. Careers span decades more than they used to. The idea that someone at 55 has no economically productive years left is simply false.

More fundamentally, the policy creates a catch-22 for older workers in a rapidly changing economy. Automation, AI, and industry restructuring are wiping out jobs that people have done for decades. Telling those workers they can't access education to transition to new careers is effectively writing them off.

The current job market makes this worse. New Zealand is experiencing youth unemployment at 11.5% and overall unemployment rising. Older workers without current skills face discrimination in hiring even for jobs they could do.

Education is one of the few pathways to overcome that discrimination. But the student loan age cap blocks that pathway.