Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 13. June 11 1979
3. Abatement
3. Abatement
Apart from the failure of the bursary to keep up with inflation it has been the abatement which has caused the most controversy. - Its effect is that the bursary is "abated" or reduced by $11 per week for students who do not have to live away from home to attend a university or a technical institute. The assumptions behind this system are that parents should contribute to a student's keep and that students should live at home. In other words the abatement is a crude form of means-testing.
It is the abatement which has caused so many of the major anomalies in the bursary. These include:—
a) | There is no age limit on abatement regulations as there is, for example on the unemployed benefit which pays a higher allowance to those over 20 years of age. In one case a forty year old woman and her son, attending university as full-time students received abated bursaries because they were both 'living at home.' |
b) | Married students receive abated bursaries on the grounds that they are "living at home." The exception is that two full-time students married, or married de facto, to each other receive the full bursary. |
c) | Students who are separated, divorced or widowed are treated as though married and receive the abated bursary. |
d) | Orphans are abated when they reach the age of majority. While a minor, an orphan receives an unabated bursary, unless his or her guardians live in the town where he / she studies. But when the orphan reaches the age of majority he or she is treated as independent and having no home other than where he or she lives, and is automatically abated. |
e) | If a student has lived away from his or her parent's home town and the parents move to the same town as the student, the student's bursary will be automatically abated — even if the student and parents lived apart for years. |
f) | In some cases a student parents live so far away from a tertiary institution that it is impractical to expect the student to to live at home. If, for example the student between the home and the institution exceeds 48km; the home is situated more than 2.4 km from the nearest public transport; or travelling tine one-way between the home and the institution exceeds one and half hours, the student can live away from home and get the full bursary. But these rules are arbitrary and it is bad luck for the student who just falls outside them. |
g) | Students may attend a tertiary institution outside their home town and receive unabated bursaries if their chosen course of study or major subject is not available in their home town. The exception is students living in the Auckland urban-area. They can attend a university outside Auckland and receive an unabated bursary, whatever their course of study This measure was designed to take pressure of growing student numbers off Auckland University but is nonetheless anomalous. |
h) | A student whose parents live overseas, or move overseas permanently, is granted the abated rate. |