UPDATE!
Turns out Max hardy DID send his column. It appears there was a glitch in the interwebs. Seriously. This Salient Editor did a thorough Gmail search, and the sent column was not found. In any case, Tardy sent it well after the Tuesday 5pm deadline. So we’re just being nice by publishing it. Too nice, some may say.
We’re keeping this quote from Margaret Thatcher: “If you want to cut your own throat, don’t come to me for a bandage.”
What a lady.
Oh, and here’s Max’s column…
President’s Column
Graduation
Last week I had the privilege of witnessing about 2100 degrees being conferred on the new Victoria graduates. I found my expectations of boredom completely misplaced and instead I thoroughly enjoyed the celebrations. Our eventual graduation is of course one of the main reasons why we are at University in the first place. It marks the culmination of a lot of hard work and dedication and it was fantastic to be able to celebrate that.
The best message to come out of graduation for me, other than the congratulations for those who have worked hard and succeeded, was about the responsibility that comes with the knowledge, skills and success that has been obtained by the graduates. It was a message put forward by many of the graduate speakers. I think we can all define for ourselves what we think that responsibility is, but as students and/or graduates I think it is clear we have a responsibility to our wider community. It is worth thinking about.
Budget 2010
The Government’s latest budget is not a fantastic one for tertiary education or most students. It seems that as announced in 2009 the Government is cutting the tripartite funding, which will see more than $2.2 million slashed from the Government’s grant to Victoria. This is obviously a lot of money. Coupled with rising costs, it will have a significant affect on our education here. Quality education costs money. We are already seeing increased pressure on academic staff and tutorial sizes, and this can only worsen this trend. It of course also means that your fees will need to go up.
However, it is not at all an easy budget to understand, and the University is still trying to come to grips with what it means for Victoria. It is also not immediately obvious what it means for us students either.
In general, the trend seems to be towards limiting access to tertiary education for some students and increasing the cost of studying for all of us.
While some of the measures will make a lot of sense to many people, they raise difficult questions about the function of tertiary education in society. I was reminded of this when I read about the story of the unemployed man who spent 12 years to become medically qualified at Otago. This man is now in a profession that is in critical demand in New Zealand, and is making a significant contribution to New Zealand. However under the new rules, he is unlikely to have been able to graduate. For those of us who believe education is a social good, that everyone should have access to it, and that people do need second chances, some of these measures are hard to swallow.
Increasing the cost of education, as well as increasing the cost of living, without increasing the support available to students is also hard to swallow.
Max Hardy
president@vuwsa.org.nz
xoxo Salient