Dr Parmjeet Parmar: ACT MP says Auckland University should pay back students who took Treaty of Waitangi and Te Ao Māori courses

ACT says Auckland University should pay back thousands of students who did compulsory Treaty of Waitangi and Te Ao Māori courses.

The university's senate has now recommended making the courses optional - after criticism from staff, students and politicians.

ACT's Parmjeet Parmar, says more than 8,000 students had to take the course this year.

"They had to push some papers out, papers that they really wanted to do, papers that are relevant to the degree or their aspirations - so they'll have to do that paper in future semesters." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The ACT Party wants Auckland University to pay back thousands
of students who were forced to take a paper on
the Treaty of White Tongue Antha al Mahori. This year
course was of course compulsory. This year it was controversial.
It looks like it's going to be voluntary next year.
ACT MP Palmjeep Palmer is with us on this. Hello
pajet Hello, did it really cost up to five seven
hundred dollars per student?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
That's for international students really? And what was it?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
What was it for domestic students?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Domestic? Close to one thousand dollars? Okay, so it's a
very expensive paper?

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Is that more? Is one thousand dollars for the paper?
More expensive than your average paper?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
So normally that's the cost. But one thousand dollars students
have to pay for this paper which is not providing
any educational value.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Have you had a chat to Auckland Council. Have you
actually engaged with them on and gotten an indication from
them as to whether they would be prepared to pay
it back.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
So what I've done is I've written a letter to them.
I've urged them to adopt Senate's decision. Because it will
be really important for them to adopt that decision because
then it becomes formal and then this paper becomes optional
from next year. I'm really urging them to do that,
otherwise it is going to hurt university's reputation if they
don't do that, because this is about student's choice. What

(01:16):
we have seen is so far is that university has
completely ignored a student interest going forward. That should not happen.
And given this is the only batch that is going
to suffer because of this bad decision of the university,
I have written in the letter that the university should
be thinking about some sort of relief for these students,

(01:36):
and I have provided one idea in that letter. That
is to provide financial credit, which should be equivalent to
fees that students paid for WTR, so that students can
use this towards the paper of their choice.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Okay, the thing is, they did get credits from these papers, right,
And if they hadn't got credits from these papers, they
would have had to get credits from other papers, which
would have cost them as well. So they ended up
probably about the same, haven't they.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
So my thinking here is that students didn't get to
study what they really wanted to study, so they had
to push some papers out, papers that they really wanted
to papers that are relevant to the degree or their expirations.
So they'll have to do that paper in future semesters.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, okay, fair enough, palg Thanks very much for your time, PALMJ. Palmer,
AX Party, MP and Education spokesperson.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
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