Exam Fees Increased

Students Wake Up

Students are suddenly beginning to awake to the fact that the University of New Zealand has, without in any way consulting student opinion and apparently without consulting the financial status of the average student, suddenly and disproportionately increased the examination fees. Students wanting to sit exams. for Bachelors' degrees will now have to pay 17/- a paper instead of a guinea a subject. This is a 60% increase in two-paper subjects and almost a 100% increase in three-paper subjects. Fees for Masters' degree examinations have been exactly doubled. The already enormous fees for professional examinations in medicine have again been increased by 60% or so, which may possibly mean that the whole purpose of medical bursaries may be defeated, as those students who could just struggle along in their bursaries will be completely flattened by these fees, all to be paid in at once half way through the year.

Why has the University done this? Where is the policy of increasing by free education? Why does the University of New Zealand need to increase exam, fees while the individual Colleges have not increased their lecture fees? Surely increased costs have hit both equally. Why should Stage I examinations, which are now organised and marked internally, suffer the same rise in cost as external Stage II and III?

The University is largely a Government financed institution; the student in the main is only partially or not at all subsidised. The student who has always had to live on a [unclear: very] small [unclear: margin] may in many cases find this additional expense just too much, especially as he is not getting a corresponding rise in financial assistance, e.g., bursaries to allow for his generally increased cost of living.

The majority of students at the University now are here because their studies have been recognised as being of national importance. The placing of additional burdens on them during the University working year is merely contradiction of this recognition.

N.Z.U.S.A. will welcome examples of cases in which the rise in fees has caused especial hardship. Please lodge complaints in detail c/o Secretary, V.U.C.S.A., in the Exec. Room.

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