Overseas Students Praised By P.M.

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31564, 29 December 1967, Page 6

Overseas Students Praised By P.M.

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, December 28. The Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) today praised overseas students in New Zealand on Government aid programmes and said they were achieving outstanding successes.

Mr Holyoake said that many of the large number of students undertaking courses in nursing, physiotherapy and various forms of technical training, had also been successful.

Commenting in a statement on results in university examinations, Mr Holyoake said; “Their success is especially significant because they are competing academically in a foreign language and in a strange environment.” The Prime Minister said overseas students were enrolled in all universities except Waikato University.

In arts and science faculties at Canterbury University students studying under the Colombo Plan and special Commonwealth African Assistance Plan passed 91 per cent of subjects

The success rate for students at Otago University was 80 per cent, at Victoria University 85 per cent, and in the arts and science faculties lat Auckland 83 per cent of units were passed. Sixty overseas students specialising in agriculture at Massey University and Lincoln passed 80 per cent of their papers. Eighty-one students in the Ardmore and Canterbury engineering schools passed 90 per cent. He said that many individual students gained excellent results.

Law Song Seng, an engineering student from Singapore, graduated from Ardmore Engineering School

with first-class honours after only three years study, and gained the highest marks in his branch of engineering. In Dunedin four Vietnamese boys in the first year for B.E. intermediate passed all subjects in spite of the great difficulty students from Vietnam have with English. A Zambian, Kasuka Mwauluka, studying at Canterbury University, was the first African to be awarded a doctarate of philosophy in botany in New Zealand. Empiang Antak, the first Iban or sea dyak girl from Sarawak to gain a university degree, graduated B.A. at Victoria University.

Gabriel Dan of Sarawak was the first land dyak to complete a B.A. (hons) degree at Victoria University.