10% Of Students Complete Courses

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29855, 22 June 1962, Page 8

10% Of Students Complete Courses

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, June 21. Only 10 per cent, of students at New Zealand universities completed their courses, said the Minister of Education (Mr Tennent) in the House of Representatives during the Address-in-Reply debate. The Minister said that the percentage included part-time students. The Government had decided, therefore, on a new system of bursaries and fees that would be sufficient to encourage students to get their degrees more quickly and as such be a reward for successful study. “It is most unfair to speak about higher tees and at the same time dissociate them from higher bursaries,” said the Minister.

Australia, he said, had raised bursaries without increasing fees which had resulted in a rise in the failure rate of 4 per cent. A young public servant in New Zealand, said the Minister, was in the same position as his counterpart of 1928, paying fees on a basis comparable with his salary of only half what was paid in 1928. Yet there was no comparison with the value of the bursary compared with what was given before the present system was introduced. The Minister announced three amendments to the present arrangements. Students entering on provisional entrance, that is those over 21 without university entrance, who previously paid all their fees right through the course, would now get the following concessions:

If they passed two subjects in the first year they got a fees bursary, and, if in the next year they passed in three subjects they went on to a higher school certificate bursary of fees plus £l2O in the first year, of fees plus £l4O in the second and third years, and of fees plus £lBO in the fourth year. Those who passed the university entrance before 1945 would go on the same basis as university entrance students of today. Students taking a double degree course would be allowed to take the degrees provided they were completed in five years, said Mr Tennent.