TSG Unworkable

Statement by Dr R.O.H. Irvine on behalf of the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors' Committee.

The New Zealand Vice-Chancellors' Committee is seriously concerned that the new Tertiary Study Grant scheme proposed by the Government will have damaging consequences for the universities. It has urged the Minister of Education to lose no time in convening a conference of senior university administrators and officers of the University Grants Committee and the Department of Education to discuss the implications of the scheme before any guidelines are promulgated.

There was no consultation with the universities before the scheme was announced, with the result that problems have occurred which could have been avoided. It is important that these problems be minimised and especially urgent that equality of opportunity for university study should not be diminished - a prospect which is inherent in this new scheme.

One of the effects of the Government proposals will be an unprecedented administrative bottleneck. Estimates of the number of students likely to apply for supplementary assistance are as high as 20,000. Personnel dealing with these applications will need to be mature and experienced interviewers with a comprehensive knowledge of the new Study Grant scheme, of means test practices, and of the widely varying regulations and administrative procedures of individual universities.

The universities have neither the staff nor the office space to cope. Indeed, finding suitably qualified people will be difficult as their services are likely to be required for only about three months of the year. The Vice-Chancellors' Committee has informed the Minister that, with great reluctance, the universities will have to surrender responsibility for administering the scheme to the Department of Education, although it has reservations about the Department's ability to handle the large number of applications in a satisfactory way.

It is absolutely essential that all students intending to enrol in 1980, both school leavers and present students, should know by 30 November, at the latest, exactly what their Tertiary Grant entitlement in 1980 will be. They need to have this information so that they can commit themselves to attend a particular university. Moreover, Halls of Residence, Colleges and Hostels must know by early December what their 1980 intake will be.