Gandar Dipping Out Badly

The New Zealand University Students' Association today described the introduction of the Standard Tertiary Bursary as a 'complete shambles'.

Commenting after a week-long visit to university campuses, NZUSA's Education Vice President (Mr Michael Shaskey) stated that it was difficult to know whether university administrators or the students were more ignorant about the provisions of the new scheme.

'Nobody has been given sufficient information', Mr Shaskey said. 'And decisions on individual cases have been delayed because the new bursary regulations have not been gazetted. The National Government's failure to make decisions promptly has placed us in the invidious position of being unable to advise our members about all the details of the new bursary.'

Mr Shaskey said that the Guidelines for Registrars, which had been promised before student enrolments began, had not arrived at universities. Therefore university administrators were forced to make ill-informed decisions about students' eligibility for the bursary. In some cases decisions on eligibility had been delayed until the regulations had been finalised and circulated. This meant that some students have had to enrol without any assurance that bursary assistance would be available for their courses of study.

'This situation has been aggravated by the lack of information for students', Mr Shaskey continued. 'In December last year the Department of Education committed itself to producing a pamphlet which eventually appeared just over one week ago but had to be scrapped because of changes in government policy earlier this week. The latest version of the pamphlet will not be circulated before students complete enrolment.'

Salient is published by the Victoria University Students' Association and printed by Wanganui Newspapers Ltd, Drews Avenue, Wanganui.