Overseas student fees

Press, 12 July 1988, Page 12

Overseas student fees

Sir,—l am very concerned about the recent move to implement the Market Development Board’s proposal to charge overseas students full fees for their university education. This has caused much anxiety among the students here. The students had come to New Zealand with the expectation of having to pay a minimal amount of fees and are, therefore, deeply stressed by the prospects of having to discontinue their education and return to their home country, as most students come from averageincome families and certainly cannot afford the proposed fees

of SNZIO,OOO to SNZI4,OOO a year. The marketing of education to overseas students is not a solution to the wider issue of. a serious lack of funding to uni--7 versifies. Universities themselves have admitted that there are no available places for “full-fees students” in popular courses. I hope, therefore, that the New Zealand public will see the unfairness of Imposing such fees on unsuspecting students and support them in the attempts to repeal the fees.—Yours, etc., LAI YWEN POR, President, Canterbury Malaysian Students’ Association. July 7, 1988.