Exodus Around the World – What is the Cost?

Recently it has been reported that New Zealanders in the thousands are seeking jobs in Australia and perhaps elsewhere. The question is being asked, what does New Zealand have to offer to job seekers? It’s not just happening here though, in Ireland the Guardian reports that Irish graduates may leave the country in droves as well.

The demographics reported in the stories aren’t exactly the same. But a lot of those kiwi job seekers would be graduates looking for a job (I am one of them). This situation does highlight one thing in my mind though – how successful tertiary students are as a lobby group. While the “golden age” of having “free” university is gone, we still subsidise a large proportion of fees. They have managed to secure things like interest-free student loans. But like every other lobby group – no amount of money would really make them shut up and go away.

Apparently 24% of New Zealand born graduates live overseas, according to Jim Hickey quoted in this article. I say students are very good lobbyists because somehow we say that it’s okay to subsidise the people who are probably better off to go to university, only for them to go overseas for some other country to reap the benefit!

Of course, talk of a “brain drain” is nothing new. But I don’t think many people have asked – are we funding this phenomenon ourselves, and if so, to what extent and why do we do it?

Anti-VSM Own Goal

The Greens are against voluntary student membership. In the very first sentence of a press release about their stance, they set themselves up for an own goal.

The decision of John Key’s Government to a bill to introduce Voluntary Student Membership ignores public opinion, the Green Party said today.

The so called anti-smacking bill was passed despite overwhelming public opposition to it. That didn’t stop the Greens from supporting it.

Does this Speak Highly of Lap Dancers or Lowly of Degrees?

The BBC has a discussion regarding a university study by Leeds has found that one in four lap dancers has a degree. An in depth article by the Independent also covers the story.

The club owner in the BBC interview likens lap dancers to people who are waiters or waitresses to fund themselves whilst going for unstable jobs, like acting. Just a different job that is more lucrative than many others. And if you do like that kind of work, why wouldn’t you do it? You’d get a high hourly rate, and flexible hours to fit around daytime commitments like study or other work.

I think it’s just an illustration that now that in many places where there are increasing numbers of students going to university, that are charging students for fees where they didn’t before mean that students need to earn more money to make ends meet during their studies. Having a good degree is no guarantee to a decent job. Well, it never was, but now more people have degrees with credential inflation doesn’t make the situation any better.

Voluntary Student Membership

I will watch Young Labour’s opposition to Roger Douglas’ Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) bill with great interest. This will not affect the Auckland University Student Association (AUSA) as they already have voluntary membership. What makes this interesting is that Young Labour has many high profile members in the AUSA, for example David Do. It is rather ironic that Young Labour probably has the most influence with AUSA, the largest and voluntary student union, when they are advocating against the VSM bill. In fact I think that this influence is so strong I have often referred to AUSA as a de facto branch of Young Labour.

Young Labour is one of many groups that strongly advocate for human rights. Douglas’ rationale for the bill is the human right to freedom of association (or non-association). They will have to explain well how their position is consistent with their strong advocacy to have any credible opposition to the bill.

Predictably the executives of student unions will be against is that they will actually have to offer something compelling to get politically apathetic students to join their association. It will be interesting to see the official response by AUSA to this bill, given their executive are dominated by Young Labour.

The thing is AUSA is that there is no fee to join, and offer all sorts of O-week freebies to entice people to join. I’ve heard in recent times that the quality of freebies have been in decline for some time. It makes no financial difference to students whether they join or not because the tuition fees are the same, as the university pays the association for various services rendered to students.

But AUSA hasn’t fallen over because it is voluntary. I read something by them (or a national student association) that they say that taking away compulsion to be part of a student association takes away their voice. I say that is a whole lot of rubbish. Joining Young Labour isn’t compulsory and they can get themselves plenty of attention!