Dr Susan Rose
KUCHING: New Zealand may be the perfect choice for those who yearn for a safe and less distracting place to live while pursuing tertiary education.
Speaking on the second day of Sideline Talks during the sixth edition of Borneo Post International Education Fair (BPIEF), Simon Chu, senior project manager from University of Otago, stated: “If you would like a place quite quiet, friendly, and more importantly safe, a small country like New Zealand is the place for you.”
He advised parents who attended the talk that if they were going to invest in their children’s education, they must pick a country carefully because at the end of the day all parents wanted an educational experience that is safe for their children.
Simon Chu
Chu added that with four million people in New Zealand, the country also offered fewer distractions for students.
Annie Goh, international manager from Lincoln University, highlighted that international students pursuing doctorate studies in New Zealand were only required to pay domestic fees, instead of international fees. Currently, New Zealand is the only country to offer that advantage to international students.
“If the students are doing postgraduate studies in New Zealand, both students and their spouses can work full time in the country,” Goh stated.
“The children will also be able to study primary and secondary educations at domestic fees.”
Meanwhile, in another sideline talk called ‘So Do You Want To Be a Doctor’, Dr Frank Local, senior lecturer of Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia, emphasised that to be a doctor was a vocation, not just a job.
Dr Frank Local
Dr Local said many students dropped out from medical schools due to the lack of intellectual challenge, adding that sometimes it was the parents’ choice to study medicine, not the students’.
The reason why students dropped out was also because of their difficulty in adapting learning styles from school to university, he said.
Dr Local advised students against becoming a doctor if they wanted to save the world, came from a family of doctors, once had a family member who was ill, or wanted to be a doctor just
because they liked ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.
He stated that medical students must be well-rounded.
“Having outside interests such as sports and music helps you to be a better doctor.”
As for choosing a business degree, Dr Susan Rose, Head of Henley Business School in University of Reading Malaysia, said a good business degree these days must emphasise on business ethics.
“We need to develop young people in business to be accountable so that they will understand what they are responsible for.”
In her talk ‘The Value of Obtaining a Business Degree from a Top Ranked Business School’, she said, “If you think about some of the difficulties in the financial crisis years back, it was partly caused by managers not behaving appropriately and ethically in terms of financial products they created and how they sold them to people who could not afford to pay back those loans.”
Other sideline talks presented yesterday at BPIEF were `Engineers in Oil and Gas Industry’ by Tay Chen Lim lecturer of Curtin University Sarawak and ‘Practical Courses to Take You Global’ by Susie Scott from Education New Zealand.