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

Causes of SHG Anomalies

Causes of SHG Anomalies

Last year Waikato University conducted research into the operation of the SHG at that University. The study concluded that there were three main causes of anomalous decisions. The first was simply straight-forward administrative or secretarial mistakes. For example, the applicant's budget may have been added up incorrectly.

Secondly sometimes specific criteria was misapplied. For example, income from A or B Bursaries could have been taken into account when assessing eligibility for SHG assistance; it is not supposed to have been taken into account. This could be attributable to the massive saturation of SHG applications.

Finally there were cases of inconsistent application of general criteria in cases where the assessor was required to exercise judgement. An example of this situation is in the case of whether a student who had used vacation earnings to repay loans taken out in the previous year should be "penalised" for having made insufficient effort to save for the current academic year.