Half part-time students fail

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32941, 13 June 1972, Page 2

Half part-time students fail

(New Zealand Press Association) HAMILTON, June 12. Students holding scholarships have a 100 per cent pass rate at all stages of the 12 subjects most frequently taken at university, but more than half the part-time students fail all their subjects in their first year.

Students who have been granted direct entry to advanced classes have a pass rate of 95 per cent. These are some findings of , the Vice-Chancellors' Committee, in its report on student performance, prepared at the request of the 1969 universities’ conference. Students entering universities with “B” bursaries were the superior group, the report said. There was little difference between the performances of Form VII entrants without a supplementary bursary and those who entered directly from Form VI. “Students with some record of failure at school tend to be inferior to those who have no record of failure, and full-time students tend to do better than those attending part-time,” said the report. The new report confirms an earlier finding that about 15 per cent of full-time students fail all their units in their first year. The 1969 conference on student performance resulted in some universities adopting ! a policy of excluding or i suspending full-time students I with records of complete | failure in their first year, i Other figures from the rei port were: i Forty-three per cent of fulltime students taking

three-year courses graduated in three years, and 50 per cent enrolled for a further year’s study. The graduation rate for scholarship holders taking full-time the three-year-minimum courses was nearly 83 per cent, and for “A” bursary entrants the rate was 73 per cent. More than 70 per cent of 1967 entrants to courses of less than three years had successfully completed them. Students who left without passing any examinations were mainly flrst-yeai students.