One week ago, the Government announced that private overseas students must now pay $1500 for every year of tertiary education in New Zealand. This figure, at which education is being sold to overseas students is 600% higher than the present amount. The only students to be spared this extortionate figure will be the students from the South Pacific Basin.

This move by the Government marks the culmination of several years of threats to and intimidation of, overseas students. During this period, the Government has been quite openly racist in its attitudes, and quite purposely misleading in its claims about the ill effects of overseas students on the university situation. With the general forthcoming education cutbacks, and the Government's known dislike to them, we might well have expected some form of attack on overseas students. After all, it is an established practice in the economic crisis for the Government to first attack those groups who are more vulnerable and least able to fight back. We know that Education spending is going to be drastically cut in the Budget and it would not have been unreasonable to expect overseas students to be first in the line of fire. But, there would have been few who would have predicted such a massive attack, (premonitions of things to come in the general field of education?).

The Effects of the Increase

Don't let anyone tell you that these massive increases in fees will have little effect on overseas students. The effects on the number and types of overseas students attending New Zealand universities will be dramatic. Even under the present situation, being an overseas student is an expensive business. At the moment, overseas students come predominantly from middle class backgrounds. However, there are still a few who, through great financial sacrifice and determination, are able to come from working class backgrounds, s.

Quite obviously, an increase of anything like 600% in fees will put an education in New Zealand beyond the price range of the majority of overseas students. Even a great number of students from middle class backgrounds will be excluded from our institutes of higher (cost?) learning. But those students from lower income groups, who should be the main beneficiaries of any educational aid, won't have a snowball in hell's chance of access to New Zealand Universities.

A "Great" Aid Programme

Let us look a little further at this question of who is supposed to benefit from the system of overseas students in our universities. It has often been the New Zealand Government's proud claim that the overseas student population in our universities represents a significant part of our aid to Third World and some Second World countries.

If this had in fact been the case, that we gave significant educational aid to our poorer world neighbours (or if we gave significant overseas aid at all), then we would have nothing but praise for the Government. However the level of expenditure and the numbers of overseas students in this country prove the Government's claim that overseas students represent significant aid is little more than a farce. But up till now, the attitude that we are helping those who most need it has been present in theory, if not in practice, in Government circles. But with the announcement of a week ago, the Government's mouthings have lost all shred of credibility.

The New Zealand Government is now in the business of selling tertiary education to the highest bidder from overseas. It is a complete turnaround in our previous policy. And it would appear that this will not be the only reversal of previous Government policy in the near future. The policy of free access to universities for New Zealand students will also be done away with in the case of education cuts.

The Causes of the Increases

Well, apart from the aspect of a precedent being set for further education cuts, [unclear: co] must also he voiced at the real reasons [unclear: l] the attacks on overseas students. The [unclear: n] reason is simply that the Governmental is [unclear: nning] to drastically cut the amount of [unclear: a ney] spent on university financing for at st the next five years. Other articles in lient have, and will, explain the effects these cuts to the whole field of [unclear: educat] But essentially, the universities will be [unclear: f ced] with a budgetary deficit [unclear: approachin] size of the Grand Canyon.

The Government is frantically [unclear: lookin] for ways in which to mitigate the [unclear: short-] falls that the universities will be facing. One of the Government's financial [unclear: wizar] (perhaps the same social philanthropist engineered our present economic crisis), seen that increasing the universities [unclear: inco] from overseas students by 600% will [unclear: he] the situation a little.

But as usual, the Government's [unclear: economic] policies are designed to facilitate [unclear: st term] expedient. And in the process, a [unclear: m] sure which will do little to overcome any financial problem, will result in very long term disadvantages and social evils, this can be said about the whole process of [unclear: e] cation cuts, but m this case the long [unclear: term] effects will be along the lines of the complete eradication of all overseas students coming from the economic strata which need education opportunities most. The policy will also result in a very small wealthy minority making up the entire overseas student population.

Fees Increases for Local Students

At right, Dominic Choong, General Secretary of the Federation of United Kingdom and Eire Malaysian and Singaporean Students Organisations (FUEMSSO),

And there is another likely [unclear: consequen] based on the experience in British universities, of the placing of differential fees [unclear: o] to the overseas students. When the British Government dramatically raised the fees [unclear: a] its overseas students, its response to [unclear: prote] against different scales of fees for overseas and British students, was to greatly [unclear: increa]

[unclear: the] British Students!

[unclear: e] abandonment of the principle on as the right of all people, and [unclear: nentalion] of the 'user pays' [unclear: sys-acation], such developments are strong possibility in this [unclear: coun-d] you, or your family, be able to pay $1500 a year for tertiary [unclear: ?] the answer is "yes", don't [unclear: hink] that many others could say This is the question that [unclear: over-nts] will have to answer before [unclear: mplate] enrolling in 1980.

[unclear: Cost] of Overseas Students

[unclear: vernment] has long been fond of [unclear: erseas] students because of the [unclear: fi-irden] they place on the education New Zealand. But this assertion [unclear: isleading]; and the Government [unclear: sely] used figures of cost to [unclear: mis-ublic].

[unclear: al] cost of running a university, [unclear: the] total number of students, [unclear: igh] figure. But it is a quite [unclear: mis-ure]. It ignores the fact that great [unclear: f] staff are kept in a job out of This includes academic and non-aca-[unclear: f] attached to the university, as [unclear: ast] army including publishers, builders, commercial cleaners and many more, [unclear: lis] high figure is not actually spent on [unclear: ent]; it is spent on keeping a large [unclear: con-] people employed. University [unclear: finan-] not operate in isolation from the fi[unclear: ations] of the whole economy.

[unclear: er], if we are desperate to emply student' figure, we see that over-[unclear: nts] do not cost as much to run as [unclear: land] student. Overseas students [unclear: seas] currency into the country. They already pay university fees which most New Zealand students avoid because of a fees bursary. They work in the vacations and thus generate commodities and profits for the owners of the places in which they work. It is quite wrong to claim that overseas students are a drain on our economy

Discriminating Fees: Part of the Cuts Campaign

The simple fact is that the Government can no longer afford to maintain the level of spending on education. They have two choices: either cut the quality of education provided, or cut the numbers of students attending educational institutes. The nature of the economic crisis is such that both choices will be employed. By increasing fees for overseas students, the Government is attempting to cut the numbers of students at tertiary institutes. The Government sees overseas students as a vulnerable group which can be cut back with little opposition. We have seen these attacks before: in 1977 the Government cut the overseas students intake by 45%.

We must see these attacks on overseas students as the first part of the forthcoming education cuts. All New Zealand students should express their solidarity with overseas students against differential fees. To do so is in our own interests, as well as in the interests of the fight back campaign against education cuts.

The great majority of overseas students come from Malaysia and Singapore. Nearly all these students come from underdeveloped countries which lack educational facilities. These countries are underdeveloped, and New Zealand is developed, precisely because we, and countries like us, have a history of exploitation of the natural resources and labour-power of the underdeveloped countries. By only aiding in the education of the children of the ruling oppressive elites of countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, New Zealand will be adding further to its; complicity with the oppression of the working classes in these countries. New Zealand has a moral duty to aid in the reparations to these oppressed nations.

It is clear that the Government of this country has no intention to do anything of the sort. In this term, students have the opportunity to show the Government that we will not take cuts in the numbers of overseas students, and we will not accept the exclusion of working-class students from overseas. It seems that the Government is determined to go ahead with these and other education cuts. It is up to students to organise against all education cuts. It is clear that if we don't fight, we will certainly lose.

Stephen A' Court.

A large contigent of overseas students joined last Thursday's protest march on Parliament, following the banner shown above.