Student ‘cash cows’ - milked for another year!

THE AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' ASSOCIATION (INC.)
TE ROOPU TAUIRA O TE WHARE WAANANGA O TAMAKI MAKAURAU

www.ausa.auckland.ac.nz

Media Release - 16 October 2007 – For Immediate release

Student ‘cash cows’ - milked for another year!

International students continue to be milked for yet another year. The University of Auckland has hiked fees for most of its international students for 2008, and turned its back on possible alternatives to continuing fee rises.

“This is incredibly disappointing. International students deserve to be treated better than this. They shouldn’t be treated as cash cows by institutions. Raising fees when international student numbers continue to fall is perverse,” says Bethanie Maples, AUSA Acting President.

Fees for almost all programmes will rise by a minimum of 5%. Students in selected programmes get a special surprise – a 7.5% hike in Architecture, Business and Economics, Engineering, Health Sciences, and Law.

In most cases these fee rises amount to upwards of $1000 a year. For example, undergraduate international students in Engineering face an estimated increase of almost $2000 a year, to be paying around a whopping $27,000 per year.

“These fee rises are simply appalling. For students already here, it means that they may have to divert money already set aside for living expenses, with negative consequences on their health and wellbeing,” says David Do, AUSA Education Vice President.

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The University voted to increase international fees at the same time that services to international students are being reduced.

The International Student information centre also recently halved its opening hours until further notice, from 8:30 to 5pm weekdays to 9am to 2pm.

It has also been revealed that additional student support for international students is not linked to fees, but is contingent on the number of students who use online visa renewal services at the international student centre. If revenue from that additional service is not fully realised, then support may be reduced accordingly.

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A resolution put forward by student reps on Council, that it “recognise that tuition fee increases have significant adverse social and economic impacts on international students,” was also lost.

Council also refused to even entertain the alternatives put forward by students, such as flat-fee grandparenting of international fees and lobbying for increased government support for international students.

“Instead, the University continues to disingenuously claim that it ‘grandparents’ its fees, when in fact it continues to increase them every single year,” says David Do.

Grandparenting means that tuition fees would be held at the same level as that set for the programme of study concerned at the time Council grandparents fees. This means that a students fees would continue to increase while a student is in the middle of their degree. AUT, Massey, and Waikato universities grandparent their fees for their international students.

“For the University to continue using the word ‘grandparenting’ to describe its annual review of its fees is incredibly disingenuous. International students deserve better services, and more than that, transparency from their institutions,” concludes David Do.

ENDS

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