Attack on N.Z. education move

Press, 24 October 1989, Page 6

Attack on N.Z. education move

By

NZPA

and

BRENDON BURNS

in Kuala Lumpur

New Zealand’s moves towards user-pays education has been criticised in a report released at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

The Commonwealth Standing Committee on Student Mobility and Higher Education' Co-opera-tion said in the report that it was “seriously disturbed” at the decline in Commonwealth student mobility. The Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, said that by yesterday no Commonwealth leaders had expressed any concern to him about New Zealand’s decision to charge full fees to foreign students.

New Zealand has followed Britain, Canada and Australia in applying the “user-pays” approach to students from overseas.

The Commonwealth SecretaryGeneral, Sir Shridath Ramphal, has warned that this could diminish the ties that bind the Commonwealth.

Malaysia is known to be particularly worried about the impact the new policy will have on its students in New Zealand. - But Mr Palmer said the issue has not been mentioned during nearly a week in Malaysia. “Not a single word from any Commonwealth leader have I heard on this subject,” he said. Mr Palmer did not expect any criticism of the new policy. The committee’s vice-chair-man, Dr Anastasios Christodoulou, said it seemed inevitable that the number of Commonwealth students coming to New Zealand privately to study would drop away sharply now they had to pay full fees.

“New Zealand was a bright star in the sky,” Dr Christodoulou said. “We’re dreadfully disappointed.” His sentiments were echoed by the Commonwealth Secretariat’s education programme director, Peter Williams, who said the secretariat had hailed New Zealand as "the good boy” on education within the Commonwealth. “We used to hold it up as a shining example,” he said. “Now we use India.” The committee’s report shows that since 1981 when Britain adopted a full user-pays policy for overseas students, the numbers of Commonwealth students attending British tertiary institutions have dropped from more than 72,000 to less than 58,000 last year. Dr Christodoulou said it was inevitable the same type of percentage drop would occur in New Zealand unless the Government offered more scholarships or reduced fees for Commonwealth students. He said countries like France and West Germany, which did not charge full fees, and American state universities with cheaper fees, were picking up the students and “laughing all the way to the bank.” Such countries could not understand why Britain was turning away students from countries With whom it shared the Commonwealth bond. Dr Christodoulou said the vital experiences gained by students

moving within the Commonwealth could be lost, to the Commonwealth’s detriment, with the four main Commonwealth student host countries all adopting full-fees policies. • The wives of Commonwealth leaders want their own forum during the official Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings. Mrs Margaret Palmer, the Prime Minister’s wife, said on Sunday the leaders’ wives had got together to discuss women’s issues and had passed a resolution calling on the SecretaryGeneral to provide for the women to have their own meetings. The husbands of the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, did not attend the meeting, Mrs Palmer said. • Mr Palmer was expected to be interviewed in Kuala Lumpur yesterday by Nigerian television for a current affairs programme there. Mr Palmer was to be questioned by a panel of three journalists on a range of issues, including the Commonwealth Games and New Zealand’s sporting contacts with Africa, a spokeswoman for Mr Palmer said. The programme, expected to take an hour, was due to be shown in Nigeria next week.