New Zealand waives intl PhD student fee

New Zealand has waived its international student fee for those undertaking research in the country. Besides, it is contemplating introducing scholarship programmes for foreign students pursuing undergraduate courses in New Zealand.

At present, it has scholarship programmes only for postgraduate and PhD programmes.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, Paul Vaughan, trade commissioner, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, said, "We are keen to encourage good research work. But there are not many local students undertaking research work in our country. Therefore, we announced the waiver of international student fee for PhD students in our country three months back."

"At present, we have 36 scholarship programmes for postgraduate and PhD students. But now we are looking at introducing the same for undergraduate students, specifically for those from India," Vaughan said.

New Zealand gets around 65,000 foreign students every year of which, according to Vaughan, Indian students are around 2,000. New Zealand, therefore, has been organising education fairs across many cities to attract more students from India.

"There is a shortage of skill-sets in our country. Therefore, it is easy for foreign students to get jobs in New Zealand. Indian students have been successful in fields like engineering and hotel management," Vaughan said.

New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, along with a government-funded organisation called Education New Zealand, has been organising these fairs in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kochi, Chandigarh, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Similar fairs will be organised in Kolkata and Chennai in the next few days.