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Editorial

Bursaries

Every year several thousand students with University Entrance are pressed to stay a further year at high school and take their so-called Higher School Certificate. About two years later a large number of students who have been driven into a part-time job by lack of funds, or think it proper to have a basic training in their chosen profession are palmed off with the H.S.C. Part-time Bursary.

An H.S.C. Full-time Bursar is entitled to payment of tuition lees, an allowance of £40 and a further allowance of £50 for board where applicable. It a Bursar takes a job he forfeits 40 or 90 pounds. In other words, it you are a law clerk beginning work in February at £5 per week, you can reflect that it cost you at least two months pay to begin your training.

Whether we like it or not, this is a university of part-timers—two thousand of them, with a majority in every faculty but one. At least hall of this number doesn't earn enough money to live on during the university year. Many work overtime during the alleged vacation. Others depend on their parents for help, and hate it.

N.Z.U.S.A. will shortly be pressing once more for aid which is taken for granted by students in countries which understand the value of higher education in a world of explosive social and scientific advance.

We cannot afford to be divided when we ask for a more equitable bursary system. The Education Department is already insured against sponging by its condition that bursars pass a required number of units each year.

It is humiliating and undignified that students must ask for a fair deal in this way, but who can look dignified when underpaid, scratching for a Jiving and subsisting on parental handouts?