Salient's fee increase story

It's been an interesting few days for Salient, a paper I used to extensively write for more than 10 years ago while also DJing on Active every week.

I read the full version of this story on Victoria University's 10 percent fee increases not long after it was posted, but also read it well before Victoria University bosses wanted me to. I wont blog it in full, go read it yourself. It was the subject of a High Court injunction.

Co-writer and Salient's News Editor Keith Ng shares his thoughts on the public relations disaster, including contents of a letter threatening to gag all student newspapers from running the story.

Except it had already run. in three other student papers. Now Victoria's students can get their own paper after Salient and VUW struck a deal. At least there is no media precedent in law.

No Right Turn has pointed out that VUW wanted to increase fees purely because staff have high opinions of themselves - i.e, snob value. One of the Deans says that the "level of fees implies that VUW offers a lower quality product in comparison with other universities. The fee level is not commensurate with the quality of the [Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences] teaching and research programmes."

One student had this to say:

It’s a freedom of speech issue. Its quite ironic really that the vice-chancellor, whose wages are paid out of our fees, used lawyers paid for with our fees to stop a magazine that’s paid for with our fees from telling us that he wants to put our fees up.

But who is paying Salient's legal fees? I think students would rather pay Salient's legal fees than the fees charged by Victoria University's lawyer.

But students don’t have a choice in the matter. If it wasn’t for Salient, we`d all be in the dark on the fee increase. Now this story has received more publicity than any student fee increase.

Well done Victoria University. I'm glad I study through Massey. It's a better quality product. I wonder what Salient will have in next week's issue.