Rising bus fares and a reduction in Auckand’s student discount will make life even harder, say AUT’s student union. Fares for public transport around Auckland increased between 10 and 90 cents per ride on April 29. Changes included a reduction in the student discount from 40 per cent to 38 per cent, to help recover [...]

A 27-year-old law student was arrested and carried away by six police officers outside a Christchurch bike shop last week. Tania Lim says she was biking to buy a helmet from the Richardson Rd bike shop when she was stopped and given an instant $55 fine. She was later stopped by the same officers for [...]

Tartan-clad boys of all ages filled St Kentigern School on Friday for the school’s annual Celtic Day celebrations. The highly anticipated day arrived with much fanfare as pupils, parents and staff got involved in the day’s, um, cultural activities. Euan Allen has been the master of ceremonies for Celtic Day for the past seven years [...]

University students are behaving more and more like customers, say some academics. The new line in thinking is changing the dynamic of the classroom, says Dr Frances Nelson, a senior lecturer at AUT University. “It doesn’t help that the [universities are] marketed as a product… a number of students are considering tertiary education as a [...]

University of Auckland students rallied alongside unions last week, tackling issues of job security, living wages and access to education. The Service and Food Workers’ Union, the Public Service Association, Auckland Action Against Poverty and the Meat Workers’ Union were among the unions invited to speak at the campus rally. The Reclaim Your University rally [...]

Student unions are skeptical about whether an additional $800 million in the education and health sector in the Budget this year will improve issues surrounding New Zealand’s $12 billion student debt.  New Zealand is one of the few countries in the OECD to actually cut funding for tertiary education over the past 10 years, particularly [...]

Voluntary student unionism – in effect from January 1 this year – has seen New Zealand student associations forced to cosy up to their universities for funding in order to even function. Last year, the Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) Bill, or more formally the Education (Freedom of Association) Bill, proposed by Act MP Roger Douglas [...]

Once he got to Auckland, 17-year-old quake survivor Mitchell Potts found he could forget how eerily life in Christchurch had suddenly come to a stand-still. “Living in Christchurch after the quake, everything had stopped. But coming to Auckland everything was moving, everything was normal again.” Mitchell Potts is in year 13 at Rangitoto College and [...]

The New Zealand media must explain the upcoming MMP referendum clearly to young people, says a class of trainee journalists. A straw poll of students studying journalism at AUT University put the referendum clearly as their top need from election coverage. Young people needed to know just what the referendum was about and what their [...]