Students marching last year for the Standard Tertiary Bursary. Will we have to take to the streets again?

Students who have been sucking the end of an oily rag waiting for their first bursary instalment, had better find something a bit more nutritious - there will probably be no payouts until the second term.

The National Government, elected to power in November on the promise of annual increases in bursaries and continued payouts for the A and B supplementary allowances, have renegged again.

The University administration have their hands tied. Last Monday's University Council meeting ordered the Vice-Chancellor. Danny Taylor, to write to the Minister of Education. Les Gandar (see front cover), expressing concern that it may not have either the legal right or the funds to pay out the first instalment of the standard tertiary bursary in April.

The introduction of the standard tertiary bursary was announced in last year's Labour budget, after students took to the streets in all the university centres to demand a 'decent living wage'. Although they didn't get all they demanded, there was general satisfaction with the new bursary system.

Mass of Regulations

However, any bursary system requires a vast number of regulations, restrictions, and this one was no exception. So, after the politicians made their decision, the Education Department and the University Grants Committee got down to work.

The University Grants Committee had drafted the regulations for universities by October last year and they hit the campuses on November 11 (i.e. 4 months ago).

The UGC then made the fatal (but necessary) step of giving its ideas to the Department of Education. This department, long considered one of the most morbund of Government agencies, has a disgustingly long record of mucking around on the standard tertiary bursary. The delay on these regulations confirmed that reputation.

All the department had to do was to draft a final copy of the bursary regulations, which had to be approved by Cabinet before being 'gazetted'. Until the gazette notice appears, the new regulations do not legally exist.

As with many other things, this situation was complicated by the election of the National Government on 29 November. From statements made before the election, it was fairly clear the National Party didn't have the first idea what was going on in bursaries. Now it is doubtful they would recognise a first idea if they came across one.

NZUSA Negotiates

But so far, despite the repeated requests from NZUSA, no action has been taken. At a meeting with the Minister of Education and the Director-General of Education (Mr Renwick) on 16 March, NZUSA officers again asked when the teriary bursary regulations would be promulgated.

Mr Renwick told NZUSA that promulgating the regulations would be given high priority, but that because of the bottleneck of work in the Education Department and their lack of legal drafting staff, he could not promise anything soon. Mr Renwick pointed out however that the Department would face legal problems in paying students bursaries if the regulations had not come out before the first payment date. He said that in that case it may be necessary for the Department to get authority from the Auditor-General to make payments despite the lack of legal regulations.

NZUSA President, John Blincoe, told Salient that the regulations had certainly not yet been finalised because Mr Renwick had promised to send NZUSA the final draft of the regulations so that any bugs could be ironed out before they were promulgated. NZUSA was still waiting to receive the final draft.

John said he sympathised with the position of the VUW Council and other university councils found themselves in. If students were not paid in time the blame should be laid squarely at the door of the Education Department.

Confusion Rife Among Students

But students may be too confused to worry. Vic.

(and other universities) put out a guide to the Standard Tertiary Bursary. This was prepared before the election and consequently had outdated information on A' and B' bursaries, which may well have confused many students.

Even worse than this was to come, again through no fault of the University. The Education Department changed its position on fees bursaries half way through enrolment They then produced 'Notes for Bursary Applicants'. This arrived at Victoria on 3 March, after everyone had finished enrolling, and there's still no indication that it is correct in every detail.

The same goes for the Government. Les Gandar, has made various mumblings which are various respects contradictory. He told the Vice Chancellors' Committee on 8 January that the new bursary would be substantially the same but a review was going on. On 21 January - a press statement, in which there was no mention of this review. If the same regulations are being used why are they taking so long to come out? Present rumours suggest anything between 3 and 6 months before something legal happens.

The most ominous cloud on the horizon is the prize Muldoon is offering to the Minister who can cut down his Department's expenditure the most. With a barrage of 'sharing the burden' and 'tightening everyone's belt' in May there's a possibility the Standard Tertiary Bursary, or significant parts of it (eg the 'A' and 'B' bursaries) could be abolished, despite repeated promises to the contrary.

The university is caught in the middle. To pay out bursaries the university needs money and legal authority. At the moment is has neither.

Registry has Problems

It also has serious problems in working out the new system of bursaries. As Deputy-Registrar Robin Gilliver told Salient, it usually takes a full year to get used to new regulations and the university has very few staff members (three at the moment) who are conversant enough with the new regulations to be able to process the huge increase in bursary applications. 'Usually we have 2500 applying for bursaries, but this year the number has leapt to 4000'.

Even though Bursaries Officer Virginia Stevenson (having been fished out from beneath a pile of papers) told Salient she hoped to have worked out what people were entitled to by the end of April, it seems that short of an incredible amount of overtime, there is very little prospect of having bursary payments ready by this date. (And this is presuming that all the other problems are cleared up meantime).

The implications of this situation are not hard to work out. Students have started their studies budgeting so much for the year, confident they would get bursary help at the end of the first term. This is now illusionary, and the hardest hit will be those students at hostels who need the STB for thier high board payments. All are going to suffer.

What can be done? Attacking the university will do very little, only delay the processing of bursary claims. Individually, students can try to get loans off the banks offering such facilities, or perhaps borrow money off parents or relatives. But that's not getting us very far. Collectively we can perhaps convince Gandar we're really annoyed with the way he's been doing nothing.

If you are facing problems over finance during the next few weeks, please see one of the following: