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Bursaries lack hits Polytec students

By Barbara Dalzell

The Education Department has still done nothing to improve the polytechnic bursary system, in spite of National Development Conference recommendations, and four-year-old promises to do something "soon".

A university student with Higher School Certificate gets nine-tenths of his consolidated fees paid, and gets an allowance of $80 per year.

A polytechnic student with the same qualifications pays up to $34 in fees, and gets nothing in the way of an allowance.

The only form of financial aid to polytechnic students is a boarding bursary for those who have to live away from home to attend their course.

This bursary is worth $40 a term.

A first-year university student has $250 boarding allowance a year—more than twice as much as a polytechnic student.

An example of the discrepancy is the difference in bursaries allowed to the journalism students at Canterbury University, and students at Wellington polytechnic.

Those polytechnic students who live away from home get $40 a term.

The ultimate frustration came for one student when she wrote to the Ombudsman to ask if anything could be done to improve polytechnic bursaries.

The reply was that if she wanted the matter examined, she would have to send $2.

At Canterbury, students can get up to $450 a year, as well as fourth year boarding allowances.

The Canterbury journalism students have about 12 hours of lectures a week as opposed to 34½ hours at polytechnic.

Their lecture hours are such that they could do part-time work far more readily than their Wellington counterparts, but it is the Wellington students who have to take part-time jobs, even if their work suffers accordingly.

The National Development Conference recommended that: "Adequate bursaries and other inducements should be available for students studying for vocational qualifications; and in determining their value, appropriate relativity with university bursaries should be reexamined."

The emphasis was placed upon the word "adequate".

The NDC also recommended: "For those full-time courses at technical institutes where university bursary prerequisites are appropriate, the bursaries should be the same.

"For any course where prerequisites are not appropriate, the student's eligibility for a bursary should be decided by special pre-entry exams established to determine the students' likely aptitude for the work."

The principal of the Wellington Polytechnic, Mr B. W. Potter, said this recommendation was particularly applicable to the design school.

"If you say University Entrance is essential, you exclude a lot good designers, so applicants have to pass a pretty daunting test before they are