EduLife

Students 'risk dropping out' if bill passed 20 Aug 2011

Hundreds of students could have dropped out of university last year without help from students' associations, which are now under threat from a parliamentary bill, the national students' organisation says. Today is the two-year anniversary since ACT MP Heather Roy's contentious Voluntary Student Membership Bill was drawn in a ballot. The Labour Party has been accused of filibustering to slow the bill's passage. According to Mrs Roy, it would need the two members' days left before Parliament rises to get it into law. But the New Zealand Union of Students Association is hoping to stave off the bill with a compromise. Co-president David Do said at least 1900 students across the country made use of advocacy services last year, many of whom could have dropped out of university if they had not had access to them. "If students are not able to get the help they need on campus ... there is a risk [of] some of them dropping out." Though this figure was a fraction of the more than 350,000 tertiary students, it was imperative services continued, as it was impossible to know when someone might need them, he said. Advocacy was offered on issues including serious academic grievances, problems with examination and grading, immigration, tenancy, and harassment and discrimination cases.If the bill passed in its current form, it was likely some associations would collapse, Mr Do said, with a conservative estimate of service loss across all associations placed at 48 per cent by a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. Mrs Roy said students would not be left without welfare services or at risk of dropping out of university under the bill because, even if services disappeared, individual universities would take on services. "I don't accept that implication at all." Associations that served their student populations well would survive, she said. Waikato University student Josh Scarrow, 21, was left homeless in his second year, after the flat he shared with five other students burned down. At $400 each, most flatmates could not pay the bond so Waikato Students Union gave those who needed it an interest-free loan. They also provided $50 each in supermarket vouchers and helped with free legal advice. "We managed to be in a new flat within a week of the last one burning down ... I wouldn't have been left high and dry but it was definitely easier and there's other people who don't have the parental safety net." While the straight-A student, currently doing his Masters in environmental microbiology, maintained high marks, he doubted that would have been possible without the association's help. Mr Do said NZUSA were proposing a less extreme version of Mrs Roy's bill which would still have universal student membership but make the student opt-out much easier. But Mrs Roy said student unions had behaved "disgracefully" over letting students opt out previously. Ref-The Dominion Post