Comment on Bursaries

Student Teachers' Association President Alex Purves said that university student leaders should be putting forward the idea that student not only need a living wage, but have a right to one.

"We should be moving university students away from the concept that they are being granted favours by being given bursaries."

He said that the Government believed that they could push students around and that nothing would happen.

"They cut the first year student teachers out of the 3.6% wage order and didn't even tell us!"

These comments struck a responsive chord for a motion was passed in which NZUSA "Condemned the Government in not applying the 3.6% wage order to new entrants into Training Colleges". There was a general feeling that students would have to stick together if bursary levels were to be maintained, let alone extended.