Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 5. March 30 1981

Who's to Blame

Who's to Blame

While so many anomlaies have occurred in the administration of the bursary scheme, it would be wrong to place the major blame for this on to the Department of Education, although its failure to formulate an efficient and reliable means of processing applications certainly hasn't helped. Instead, it is the Government and its financial wizards who dreamed up this unworkable scheme, and who persisted in implementing it despite all advice to the contrary, who deserve the blame.

Although no bursary system administered on such a large scale can be expected to be completely anomoly free, widespread means-testing, such as the present schemes involves, encourages anomolies and dishonesty, while at the same time costs a great deal more to administer than a scheme which ensures a reasonable basic level for all students, and where hardship grants are only required for a minority of students.