Bartamaha ( New Zealand):- The student profile may be getting “more boring” as it becomes harder for minority groups to get to university – with refugees soon to feel the effects of an axed government grant.
The loss of the refugee study grant – announced last year but due to take effect next year – had compounded increasing university entrance restrictions, Tertiary Education Union president Tom Ryan said.
“For the first time in modern New Zealand history, people are being kept out of the doors of our institutions because there’s more students than places, and you can be sure that it’s going to be the children of refugees and [other minorities] being kept out.”
The grant, which began in 2003, provided recipients up to $4000 a year for each year of their qualification. It cost nearly $1.5 million annually.
Somali refugee Ummy Amin, 23, who graduated from Victoria University this month with a bachelor of arts, said she would be uneducated and married with children, were it not for the grant.
Instead, she is now a community leader worried about how the loss of the grants will affect her fellow refugees.
“When you’re a refugee, your level of confidence is just not very high. You don’t have that mentality to say `let me try this out’ … The opportunity from the Government saying `you can be something if we show you how’ [is so important].”
Miss Amin had no intention of going to university when she left school, till someone suggested she use the grant for a university foundation course. It gave her crucial academic English, as well as research and essay-writing skills.
But it was the support and confidence gained that she credits for her university success. The B+ student knew at least 10 people who had dropped out because they were unprepared. “To be honest … I probably wouldn’t have lasted one semester [without the course].”
Miss Amin, who came to New Zealand from Kenya six years ago after fleeing her war-torn homeland, said it felt good to go from “being nothing” to a contributing member of society.
Refugees were reluctant to take on student loans when they had no confidence they would succeed in a system they did not understand – but gaining education helped erase traumatic memories, she said.
Mr Ryan called the move “penny pinching and . . . not thought through”. “It’s relatively small amounts of money for quite significant positive outcomes.”
The Waikato University senior anthropology lecturer said he had taught many young refugees who “absolutely blossomed in that academic environment” and became community leaders – but could not have gone to university without the grants. The student profile was becoming more boring, as those migrants, Pacific Islanders, Maori and others in the traditional low socio-economic spectrum were squeezed out of university. “To not have them around is a loss for everyone.”
Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce said the Government had faced “difficult fiscal decisions” for the 2009 tertiary education budget because of unfunded commitments by the previous government.
“A number of small funds were disestablished which had relatively high compliance or administration costs and provided outcomes that could be achieved elsewhere.”
While there were other initiatives that aided migrants and refugees – such as student loans and allowances or training and literacy schemes – officials were currently doing a “stocktake” of refugee education needs, he said.
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