Students attack cut in overseas quota

Press, 10 June 1977, Page 17

Students attack cut in overseas quota

Restrictions imposed by the Government last year on the entry of first-year private students from Malaysia had meant a 45 per cent drop in their numbers, a forum called by the national Overseas Students’ Action Committee has been told. The forum was attended by about 200 students from the University of Canterbury l , most of them Malaysian.

Figures put before the forum showed that the total number of first-year private overseas students admitted to New Zealand universities this year fell from 743 to 407. The number of first-year Malaysian students fell by a similar proportion, from 546 last year to 293 this year. “In spite of statements to the contrary, these facts show that the intention behind the Government’s policy changes is to axe private overseas students numbers,” the forum was told.

The two speakers at the forum were Mr J. Novick, a Fijian student who is national co-ordinator for the action committee, and Ms L. Sacksen, president of the N.Z.U.S.A. Ms Sacksen said that in reducing the number of private overseas students allowed into New Zealand, the Government had completely ignored the views of the universities. “The students’ association opinion is that the universities, through the 0.5.A.C., should be the bodies responsible for any alterations in overseas student numbers, because the universities are the bodies best able to set overseas-student intake quotas,” she said. “The Government’s policy is an underhand way to redistribute and economise, and it shows both racism and even cowardice,” she said. “I only wish more New Zealand students were here at this meeting. It is time to fight back: We won in Australia nd England on this issue, and England on this issue, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t win here.” Mr Novick said that it was the Overseas Students

Action Committee’s purpose to persuade the universities in New Zealand that it was their right to decide how many overseas students they wanted; and if the committee did not succeed this year, it would keep on trying until it did.

The Government, in deciding to reduce the intake of Malaysian students in 1977 to half the total overseas student intake in 1975, and to reduce it by a further 10 per cent next year, had said that the countries from which private overseas students would be admitted would be extended to include the Middle East. “However, official statistics show that Malaysians have not, as has been suggested by the Government taken other overseas students’ places,” Mr Novick said. “It is also clear that the Government’s policy of allowing students to come here from the Midle East will not have the effect of making up for the cut in Malaysian numbers. Most Middle East students have never even heard of New

Zealand.” The other excuse given by the Government for restricting Malaysian entry — that Malaysian students were denying places that should have gone to students from the South Pacific, which was not in keeping with the Government’s aim to give priority to the educational needs of the South Pacific —- was also specious. Mr Novick said.

Other issues related to the Government’s policy on private overseas students to come in for criticism from the forum included the languageachievement test for overseas students that was compulsory for admission to a New Zealand university; the Government’s suggestion that overseas students who married New Zealanders would have to be married for two years before they could obtain permanent residence; and the Government’s aid policies in the Pacific which, Mr Novick said, were aimed to please “the administrative strata of the Pacific Islands” rather than the people.