When a student's too
p. 31 · Read in the full issue
qualified to get into Australia
From SUE WENDT , in Suva Do what you can today—let tomorrow look after itself. This appeared to be the strange reasoning behind the Australian
Immigration Department’s most
recent rejection of a Fiji student’s application to stay in Australia.
According to statements from the department, Fiji-born Mr. Yogesh Kanji Jogia, would have been wasting his time in pursuing a post-graduate degree in science, specialising in bio chemistry, as he sought to do.
In confirming the ban, the Minister for Immigration, Mr. P. Lynch, said: “Mr. Jogia had been unsuccessful in his application to undertake post graduate studies because there was no demand in Fiji for the qualifications he wished to obtain.”
Inquiries, it seemed, had shown that people with an MSc degree just weren’t needed in Fiji. Yet, that is.
Those with a bachelor of science degree, as Mr. Jogia has, were more fortunate.
Mr. Lynch said the main aim of ad mitting overseas students to Australia is to enable them to obtain qualifica tions which would be of use to them when they return home.
And if they are TOO qualified?
According to the department’s reason ing, that’s as useless as not having a degree at all.
It all seems rather short-sighted.
It doesn’t seem too unreasonable to suppose that there might in the near future be scope for qualified bio chemists—at institutions such as the Fiji School of Medicine, perhaps, the Fiji School of Agriculture or the University of the South Pacific.
Back in Fiji, Mr. Jogia, who gained his BSc degree, specialising in bio chemistry, from the University of Western Australia, has applied for a position as assistant lecturer at the University of the South Pacific.
In July, a spokesman for the USP said that since applications for the job had not yet closed overseas, they had not yet been considered.
Mr. Jogia, the son of a Suva busi nessman, was in Australia for eight years as a private student. He com pleted his secondary education in Melbourne and later went to the University of Western Australia.