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Uni magazine’s inaccuracies confirmed by the Minister

Yesterday morning,, I rang up minister Steven Joyce’s office regarding yesterday’s inaccurate story in Salient regarding entitlement to student assistance, before I wrote this blog post. They weren`t aware of the story but said they’d get back to me. They didn’t but they did get back to NZPA confirming inaccuracies in the article, after the NZPA parroted a story picked up by the NZ Herald.

Joyce’s office made these points

* Generally, most conjoint degrees take less than 5 EFTS (effective full time student) to complete. An additional year for honours would take the student to 6 EFTS. However, if a masters study took them over the 7 EFTS limit, they would be given an additional one EFTS to finish their degree;
* Most students who complete a medical degree at Otago University will do 1 EFTS Health Sciences First year and then 5 EFTS for the remainder of the medical degree -- a total of 6 EFTS.
 A student who completes their degree and honours degree before going over their 7 EFTS limit will have one additional year of entitlement for masters study that takes them over the 7 EFTS limit.

The past few Salient editors have used a few EFTS - they have honours degrees. Obviously the current one doesn’t know much about EFTS.