Students Oppose Trend To Bonded Bursaries

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30213, 19 August 1963, Page 12

Students Oppose Trend To Bonded Bursaries

(New Zealand Press Association)

DUNEDIN, August 18. The New Zealand University Students’ Association will approach the Education Department to ask for greater discretion in the enforcement of bonded bursaries, especially for students who wish to do higher study overseas or work in volunteer schemes in Asian or Pacific countries. This was decided at a meeting of the presidents’ subcommittee of the association on Saturday and endorsed by the full council today. Mr N. D. Thomson (Canterbury* mentioned the case of students who wanted to study for advanced degrees overseas, but who were prevented from doing so by bursary ties

Bonded bursaries are offered by various Government departments and give the student an annual financial allowance In return the studet signs a bond to work for the department for a specified number of years. The most common is the Education Department’s postprimary teachers’ studentships, which stipulate that the student must work for the department for the same number of years that he receives the studentship. The president (Mr M. J Moriarty) told the council that bonded bursaries were the biggest problem in the education field facing the association. The association reaffirmed its opposition to the principle of bonded bursaries

In presenting his report. Mr Moriarty recommended a campaign to publicise the more undesirable aspects of the arrangements.

In reply to Mr P. J. R Blizzard (Victoria), who noted that the Education Department was introducing a bond into primary teaching arrangements, Mr Moriarty said the association was trying to reverse the trend "We must reverse the trend before private firms step tn and offer their own bonded bursaries.”

Mr Moriarty said the association was devoting more of its time to activities with social or national aims rather than to projects tor the students' material betterment. As an example he cited the United States National Students’ Association’s work to promote racial integration. Mr Moriarty suggested that students might ask what the role of the university in the community

was and what contribution it could make. Mr Thomson claimed that too much academic work was being set and the student did not have time for speculative thought about his work in general. Mr R. Richards said this was a problem also worrying university staff. “In the University of Otago, this problem is especially acute in the special schools—medicine, dentistrj and home science,” said the Otago delegate. Mr M. Brennan.