ARTS GRADUATES Employment Hazard In Public Service

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32031, 4 July 1969, Page 1

ARTS GRADUATES Employment Hazard In Public Service

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, July 3.

Arts graduates from New Zealand’s universities may soon have difficulty in finding employment in the public service.

The State Services Commission is believed to be concerned about the number of arts graduates being paid graduates’ salaries when their degree is of little relevance to their work, says the industrial reporter of the “Dominion.”

At a meeting with the Public Service Association last month, Mr R. G. Norman, a member of the State Services Commission, said he considered that employers should be discouraged from recruiting people with qualifications above the level of their duties, as it was a disadvantage to have people “overeducated” for the work they had to perform.

“Mr Norman’s attitude is a reflection of the opinion of many New Zealand employers that an arts degree does not equip a person with any particular skill, and that arts graduates can sometimes be an embarrassment in that

they are paid higher than workers with lesser educational qualifications who may perform the same duties as well or better,” says the writer. “The S.S.C. has already sent one circular to department heads advising that arts graduates with honours or masters degrees which are not particularly relevant to their work should be paid only at the rate of a bachelor’s degree.

“A second circular to department heads restricting the subjects for which leave in working hours could be granted to public servants attending university, and referring to the commencing salaries of graduates, was to have been issued this month. “But this has been withheld pending talks between the commission and P.S.A. on the subject," says the report.