University fees up 80 per cent

Press, 6 October 1988, Page 7

University fees up 80 per cent

By

JENNY LONG

Most University of Canterbury students will pay fees of $129 for a full-time course next year.

For those students not on a fees grant, the full fees of $516 will apply. The corresponding fees this year were $72 and $298. The University of Canterbury Council adopted yesterday the University Grants Committee recommendations that fees for next year be set at $516. For full-time students who qualify for a fees grant, three-quarters of the $516 is paid by the Government. The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Bert Brownlie, said that the Government fee subsidy put pressure on the university to accept the fee increase. The increase Represented about $1.7 million in extra revenue to the

university, about half coming from students and half coming from the Government, Professor Brownlie said. Dr James Holmes moved that the council approve a fee rise to $512 rather than $516, in order to show that it did not approve of a fee increase, but the motion was narrowly lost. The student president, Mr Sam Fisher, said that the increase in fees of 80 per cent would mean that the types of students already under-represented at university would be most affected. Professor Brownlie said that Liberal Studies students were among those people particularly disadvantaged at the time

of the last fee increase as they were not eligible for the fees grant. The university was negotiating to get the grant of fees for those students, Professor Browlie said. Professor Brownlie told the council that analysis of this year’s students showed that 5000 qualified for a bursary and the rest, about 4000, were paying their own fees. Of that 4000, 2000 had income of more than $4OOO and so were ruled out on income grounds. A further 1000 students failed to gain the bursary on academic grounds. About 200 had already been awarded the bursary for the five years allowed, and 670 overseas students did not receive the bursary.