Graduate Employment Scheme

The New Zealand government has officially approved in principle the N.Z.U.S.A. Graduate Employment Scheme, according to a letter received from Mr. G. C. Burton of the Department of External Affairs, at a meeting of the Resident Executive of N.Z.U.S.A. in Wellington on May 29. The letter indicated that the department's representative in Djakarta. Mr. Hull, would investigate practical aspects of the scheme before full approval would be given. It is believed the Indonesian government will readily approve the scheme once the New Zealand government has done so, and there seems to be no reason why the scheme should not be in operation by next summer.

The scheme provides for New Zealand graduates to work in Indonesia with the object of assisting the Indonesian people to build their war-ravaged country into a fully developed and prosperous nation. Graduates working under the scheme would live in the same manner and receive the same rate of pay as Indonesians in similar positions.

N.Z.U.S.A. believes this is an important part of its inter-national activities: it is one of the two specific schemes through which N.Z.U.S.A. hopes to give practical aid to South East Asian countries. The other scheme is the S.E. Asian Scholarship under which an Indonesian student. Wasisto Surjodiningrat is at present studying at A.U.C. The improvement of relations and mutual understanding between New Zealand and Asian countries, particularly at a student level (the student of today is the leader of tomorrow) is a cardinal point in N.Z.U.S.A.'s international policy.

At the Easter Council Meeting of N.Z.U.S.A.. president Des. Dalgety told delegates that the association had been ready to put the scheme into operation for many months; an impressive number of applications had been received, and delays on the part of the New Zealand and Indonesian government in approving the scheme had been most frustrating. The scheme proposed by N.Z.U.S.A. is closely modelled on one which has been successfully operated by the Australian national student union for some years.