Rite of passage to a new world

By CHRIS BARTON

The 25-year-old waved goodbye from the departure gates at Auckland Airport last week.

It was a moment of mixed emotions - sadness to see him go, pleasure that he was venturing into the big, wide world.

Ben was off on his OE, a rite of passage for so many antipodeans, just as the Blair Government is planning to shorten the UK working holiday visa from two years to one.

Not that it will bother him much - he is one of the fortunate ones with a British passport.

Talking with an elder colleague who did his OE 30 years ago got me thinking about the differences between now and then.

In Jim's day, he travelled by ship - a three-week-long, boozy Aussie and Kiwi party of which he recalls little.

But the biggest difference is clearly communication. For news from home Jim had to wait a week or so for snail mail, and on the rare occasion he rang at Christmas five minutes cost a whopping £20.

Contrast that with Ben's world. He has only been gone a few days and we have already spoken to him by phone - $4 for 7 1/2 minutes - had several e-mails, a couple of text conversations by Microsoft Messenger, plus sent a few phone text messages (20c each) to his UK mobile phone.

Communication like this really does make the world smaller.

The web also played a big part before his departure: searching for job prospects, e-mailing applications and posting his CV to websites. The keyboard work paid, with three job interviews teed up before departure and an offer (accepted) the day he arrived.

The use of computers is another key difference. The computer is now indispensable to just about every job and in some cases - such as publishing and designing - has transformed the way the job is done.

But even though Ben has grown up in the computer age, most of his learning about this vital tool has come not through the education system, but on the job or through using the PC at home.

Why? Because getting daily access to computers in our education system - especially at schools and even at tertiary level - is not the norm. And as anyone who uses computers will tell you, the real learning occurs with constant use.

While internet communication gives Ben many advantages, he also has one huge disadvantage Jim never faced - student debt.

Like many of his generation, Ben has clocked up a daunting sum. With interest at 7 per cent, students are typically faced with paying off anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 and often much more over eight to 10 years.

Has it led Ben to become another brain drain statistic? In part, yes.

Thanks to our risible exchange rate, the prospect of paying his huge loan back from earning British pounds seems faintly manageable. Equally, if by some chance his career takes off, the prospect of servicing such a debt is a huge disincentive to return home.

Total student debt in this country is now over $4 billion (www.minedu.govt.nz/web/document/document_page.cfm?id=6571&p=1047). By 2005 it is projected to be $6 billion. By 2010, $10 billion.

Interestingly, it is on the Government books as an asset. Isn't it time our Government started treating students as assets, not their debts?

It is against this background that the Government says it wants to transform New Zealand into a knowledge economy (www. executive. govt. nz/speech. cfm?speechralph=33837&SR=10).

Many things - such as encouraging high-tech manufacturing industries to set up here and providing affordable nationwide broadband internet - need to happen for such an economy to come about.

But even more fundamental is the need for a computer-proficient workforce. That means an education system geared at every level to the productive use of computers.

It is a task fraught with problems - not the least of which is the high cost of running a computer always needing new and more advanced software.

There are signs that such a fundamental change is coming - with some private schools now insisting that all their students are equipped with a computer.

But regular (daily) use of computers needs to spread deeper into the state education system.

Even more important is the need to remove a loans scheme that cripples tertiary students with debt. Until then talk of developing a knowledge economy in New Zealand remains hollow rhetoric.

Email: Chris Barton