A few days ago I was part of a conversation on Twitter that I've just been reminded of in which, basically, another user and I went off on a rant about tertiary education with poor Gareth Hughes (of the Greens party) on the receiving end. (Sorry about that Gareth!)
Something that came up that he hadn't been aware of was that in the last Budget (timing reference from @caffeine_addict since I wasn't sure myself when this had happened) a change was made to Studylink entitlements, namely that course-related costs can now only be borrowed by full-time students. For the few who may not be aware, there are three components of a student loan - course fees (paid directly to the university/etc), course-related costs (for buying textbooks and other such things - in my case this will include airfares to get to contact courses) and living costs (up to, unless it's changed recently, $150/week to survive on). The latter two are only for full-time students, and of course those who qualify for the student allowance don't usually bother with the living costs because borrowing money to live on is bad finances.
The problem is, as education gets more expensive and the cost of living increases, the number of people who can afford to be full-time students goes down. While it's possible to both work and study full-time, it requires a job with flexible hours and good time management skills, and in an economy where hundreds of people apply for minimum wage supermarket jobs, the chances of getting such a job aren't great. So basically we have a situation where more and more students are being classified as part-time, and at the same time the financial assistance offered to part-time students is getting more and more limited, which is why situations like mine are so common where without limited full-time classifications it would be impossible for me to go back to university - and if I was under 25 I'd only be able to do it by borrowing money to live on, thanks to the student allowance criteria that means-test a student's parents.
And, of course, these changes are going under the radar. Gareth didn't even know about the course-related costs change and he's an MP - albeit not one in the education field, so I don't blame him, there's a hell of a lot to keep track of - so people who went to university a decade or two ago most likely assume that funding is just as easy, or even moreso, now than it was back then.
(The discussion also touched on the preponderance of scholarships and aid for trades students while other sectors have absolutely nothing at all, but by god I have complained about that more than enough and besides which it's a failing of the very nature of private scholarships [which for the most part I support] rather than government policy.)
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Enrollment is open!
Before the weekend I sent Massey an email explaining my situation and asking whether my goals would be feasible. Today I got a response.
Hello Chris
Thank you for your query.
Firstly, it would certainly be possible to transfer your credits from Canterbury University, whether these are given as specific papers or general credit will depend on your Canterbury transcript.
Student returning from exclusion are usually only permitted to take 30 credits per semester, and only permitted to continue if they pass a minimum of half their papers in the year. Therefore, I consider your plan to be a realistic one.
I have an additional recommendation that your enrol first with us under a Diploma in Arts (120 credits) which is an eight paper qualification that can be upgraded to a BA at a later date. This will allow you to have a more tangible completion date based on the rate you are completing papers.
Please contact me if you have any further queries.
Having looked at what you have to do to transfer credits (including a fee of $85), I'm not sure whether or not I will, especially since I only have space for, at most, one of the courses I've already done if I do a diploma first. (I'd be doing five Maori Studies courses, one in academic writing, and two elective, which I probably want to do as Social Policy.)
When I was checking the right email address to use to contact them, I noticed that enrollment was due to open in "early October" so I looked back today. Sure enough, it's open. So after I eat dinner I'll be working with the StudyLink and Massey websites to see how much I can get done towards applying for limited full-time status, looking at a student loan, and enrolling. The enrollment deadline is in December, so I have plenty of time, but hell. I'm excited. \o/
Hello Chris
Thank you for your query.
Firstly, it would certainly be possible to transfer your credits from Canterbury University, whether these are given as specific papers or general credit will depend on your Canterbury transcript.
Student returning from exclusion are usually only permitted to take 30 credits per semester, and only permitted to continue if they pass a minimum of half their papers in the year. Therefore, I consider your plan to be a realistic one.
I have an additional recommendation that your enrol first with us under a Diploma in Arts (120 credits) which is an eight paper qualification that can be upgraded to a BA at a later date. This will allow you to have a more tangible completion date based on the rate you are completing papers.
Please contact me if you have any further queries.
Having looked at what you have to do to transfer credits (including a fee of $85), I'm not sure whether or not I will, especially since I only have space for, at most, one of the courses I've already done if I do a diploma first. (I'd be doing five Maori Studies courses, one in academic writing, and two elective, which I probably want to do as Social Policy.)
When I was checking the right email address to use to contact them, I noticed that enrollment was due to open in "early October" so I looked back today. Sure enough, it's open. So after I eat dinner I'll be working with the StudyLink and Massey websites to see how much I can get done towards applying for limited full-time status, looking at a student loan, and enrolling. The enrollment deadline is in December, so I have plenty of time, but hell. I'm excited. \o/
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Sex in America
Salon has posted a sex-ed test for adults. Curious, I decided to take it. My total score was 16/27, which, in their summary at the end, means I'm probably Canadian.
I'm used enough to this sort of thing that it just amuses me now - ironically, I would have had a higher score if some of the questions weren't so US-statistic-centric. Among my incorrect answers were the number of US states that allow same sex marriage (I picked four), how many married people are happy with their current partner (I said 64%), the most visited porn site on the web (I picked youporn because it was the only one I'd ever heard of, thank you fanfic) and the percentage of heterosexual men and women in the US who've had anal sex. I picked 25%, because many a year ago I read something saying that about 25% of straight people and 25% of gay people had had anal sex. None of my wrong answers are actually to do with the having of sexual acts, which is funny, because I have very little interest whatsoever in having sexual acts.
I'm used enough to this sort of thing that it just amuses me now - ironically, I would have had a higher score if some of the questions weren't so US-statistic-centric. Among my incorrect answers were the number of US states that allow same sex marriage (I picked four), how many married people are happy with their current partner (I said 64%), the most visited porn site on the web (I picked youporn because it was the only one I'd ever heard of, thank you fanfic) and the percentage of heterosexual men and women in the US who've had anal sex. I picked 25%, because many a year ago I read something saying that about 25% of straight people and 25% of gay people had had anal sex. None of my wrong answers are actually to do with the having of sexual acts, which is funny, because I have very little interest whatsoever in having sexual acts.
Friday, 12 August 2011
Doing Studylink
It turns out the government is so committed to making tertiary education accessible that there's a whole department dedicated to putting students in debt. As well as a basic student loan to cover course fees, if you can't afford to eat while studying full-time, you can borrow your living costs from the government.
Okay, this isn't entirely fair - they also manage student allowances, again for full-time students. Here's where I get lucky. Because I'm closer to 30 than 20, my parents' income doesn't get means tested when they decide whether I can get one. Remember how I said I was the fourth of five children? To raise five kids, my parents had to draw in a pretty decent sum of money. Unfortunately Studylink doesn't take into account the fact that all seven people in the house needed to eat and have things to wear, they just look at the income and say it's too much. Now that I'm over 25 though, they trust that I actually have to support myself (I guess most poor people are supposed to still be supported by their parents for quarter of a century), though the fact that I'm boarding in my parents' house (due to the fact that I cannot afford market rent prices; I pay an amount closer to what market rent was when I was renting a few years ago) does affect how much of a student allowance I could get. The fact that I could get one at all is due to limited full-time - basically, I'll have to get Massey to tell Studylink that I'm too sick to study full-time, so just handwave and pretend that I am.
Anyway, on the Studylink website, you sign up for an online user id so it will save your eligibility test results and let you apply over the internet. Oddly enough, despite the rather confusing nature of the actual eligibility test when your situation isn't completely straightforward, it was signing up for a user id that I had the most trouble with, and this is due to strength. If you've signed up for a lot of online accounts you've probably come across at least one that will tell you your "password strength". It's based on factors like the length, the type of characters used, and sometimes whether it's made up of words you can find in the dictionary. Studylink loves strength. It protects your account from hackers who are too lazy to actually hack! Not that they even have a name linked to my account yet. Here's what you give them when you're signing up:
Password: You'll see why I'm listing password first in a moment. The strength restrictions on your password are that it has to be 8-15 characters, made up of both letters and numbers. Easy enough.
Username: Your username, which you use to log in as, has exactly the same requirements as the password. This is where I had to think for a moment because none of the various handles I use online have numbers in. I just replaced some vowels with numbers.
After confirming your password you get another common security feature - Challenge question. If you forget your password, the question will come up and you have to give the right answer to reset it. Studylink offers ten choices of question. However, here's the trick. The answers have strength restrictions too. They don't have to have numbers in them, but they have to be 6-30 characters, with no spaces. I'm going to list the questions they offer, with my answers, using x for every letter.
What was the name of your first school? xx xxxxxxx
What is your father's middle name? xxxx
What is the first name of your favourite childhood friend: Either xxx or xxxxx
What street did you live on when you were five years old? xxxxxxx xxxxx
What was your first job after leaving school? xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx
Where did you celebrate the start of the new millenium? I honestly can't remember, but at a guess, xxxx
What is the name of your first stuffed toy? xxxxx
What was the first concert you attended? xxx xxxxxxx
What is the middle name of your youngest child? I don't have one.
In what city or town did your mother and father meet? I'm not sure about this one either, but several of the options have two words.
Notice something about that? Every answer that I know for sure is either too short or has a space in it. Even the ones I'm not sure of or have a couple of answers for won't work. In the end I had to adjust an answer and hope that if I ever forget my password, I'll remember what the hell I did. On the plus side, I guess anyone else would have trouble figuring out what the hell I did, too.
At this point, I am actually going to pause a little in the whole process. My next step would be to apply for a student ID and PIN at Massey, which is the first step in online enrollment, but tomorrow I have an appointment with a Justice of the Peace - after wanting to do it for a few years, I'm getting my name changed so my surname will no longer be a rough equivalent of "Pleasestalkme". I want to hold off on giving my name out to a whole pile of institutions until I have that done, because it's much easier than trying to convince them to change it in their systems later.
In the meantime, I'll be sticking with my budget and keeping on clocking in hours at work, trying to get the money to pay for as much of this as possible. Kia ora!
Okay, this isn't entirely fair - they also manage student allowances, again for full-time students. Here's where I get lucky. Because I'm closer to 30 than 20, my parents' income doesn't get means tested when they decide whether I can get one. Remember how I said I was the fourth of five children? To raise five kids, my parents had to draw in a pretty decent sum of money. Unfortunately Studylink doesn't take into account the fact that all seven people in the house needed to eat and have things to wear, they just look at the income and say it's too much. Now that I'm over 25 though, they trust that I actually have to support myself (I guess most poor people are supposed to still be supported by their parents for quarter of a century), though the fact that I'm boarding in my parents' house (due to the fact that I cannot afford market rent prices; I pay an amount closer to what market rent was when I was renting a few years ago) does affect how much of a student allowance I could get. The fact that I could get one at all is due to limited full-time - basically, I'll have to get Massey to tell Studylink that I'm too sick to study full-time, so just handwave and pretend that I am.
Anyway, on the Studylink website, you sign up for an online user id so it will save your eligibility test results and let you apply over the internet. Oddly enough, despite the rather confusing nature of the actual eligibility test when your situation isn't completely straightforward, it was signing up for a user id that I had the most trouble with, and this is due to strength. If you've signed up for a lot of online accounts you've probably come across at least one that will tell you your "password strength". It's based on factors like the length, the type of characters used, and sometimes whether it's made up of words you can find in the dictionary. Studylink loves strength. It protects your account from hackers who are too lazy to actually hack! Not that they even have a name linked to my account yet. Here's what you give them when you're signing up:
Password: You'll see why I'm listing password first in a moment. The strength restrictions on your password are that it has to be 8-15 characters, made up of both letters and numbers. Easy enough.
Username: Your username, which you use to log in as, has exactly the same requirements as the password. This is where I had to think for a moment because none of the various handles I use online have numbers in. I just replaced some vowels with numbers.
After confirming your password you get another common security feature - Challenge question. If you forget your password, the question will come up and you have to give the right answer to reset it. Studylink offers ten choices of question. However, here's the trick. The answers have strength restrictions too. They don't have to have numbers in them, but they have to be 6-30 characters, with no spaces. I'm going to list the questions they offer, with my answers, using x for every letter.
What was the name of your first school? xx xxxxxxx
What is your father's middle name? xxxx
What is the first name of your favourite childhood friend: Either xxx or xxxxx
What street did you live on when you were five years old? xxxxxxx xxxxx
What was your first job after leaving school? xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx
Where did you celebrate the start of the new millenium? I honestly can't remember, but at a guess, xxxx
What is the name of your first stuffed toy? xxxxx
What was the first concert you attended? xxx xxxxxxx
What is the middle name of your youngest child? I don't have one.
In what city or town did your mother and father meet? I'm not sure about this one either, but several of the options have two words.
Notice something about that? Every answer that I know for sure is either too short or has a space in it. Even the ones I'm not sure of or have a couple of answers for won't work. In the end I had to adjust an answer and hope that if I ever forget my password, I'll remember what the hell I did. On the plus side, I guess anyone else would have trouble figuring out what the hell I did, too.
At this point, I am actually going to pause a little in the whole process. My next step would be to apply for a student ID and PIN at Massey, which is the first step in online enrollment, but tomorrow I have an appointment with a Justice of the Peace - after wanting to do it for a few years, I'm getting my name changed so my surname will no longer be a rough equivalent of "Pleasestalkme". I want to hold off on giving my name out to a whole pile of institutions until I have that done, because it's much easier than trying to convince them to change it in their systems later.
In the meantime, I'll be sticking with my budget and keeping on clocking in hours at work, trying to get the money to pay for as much of this as possible. Kia ora!
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Isn't there a grant for that?
(Two quick corrections to yesterday's post - first, with education discount the lower end Mac Mini would be $919, not $949, and my weekly income of $240 is before tax. My actual take home pay is a fortnightly sum of $310.60.)
A common refrain in regards to high costs and low government subsidies is that private charity will pick up the slack. In regards to education, this takes the form of scholarships. There are a lot of scholarships, so many that the Funding Information Service has a website database of them - more than 2,200 - which you can search. If you have a subscription. How much is that subscription? Well, from the website...
"BreakOut Easy-Pay prices for individuals:
Start-up fee: $28.75 this includes half an hour access
Subsequent hours: $51.75 per hour"
What? $52 an hour just to find out if there are people who might help you get an education you couldn't otherwise afford? Needless to say, I do not have this much money, and given that I live in Christchurch, the nearest public library that might have free access is a while away - my local library has been demolished. Nor can I use a secondary school's access, as I'm, you know, not a secondary school student.
Given that Massey is my only really viable choice for university (Canterbury doesn't offer Social Policy and Massey has by far the best extramural program), I instead looked at the scholarships section on their website. There are 128 scholarships available for first year students, and after my first look through them I decided to roughly categorise them, for fun. Some scholarships - probably most of them, actually - apply to more than one category, and just because you meet the criteria of one category (say, being a Food Tech student) doesn't mean you qualify for all the scholarships in that category. This is especially true for the Maori students scholarships, as most of them are for particular tribes, and I'd wager there are few people who can demonstrate a legitimate claim to all of those tribes. Most Maori students would probably qualify for two or three of those scholarships at the most.
A couple of extra notes - "agriculture" I've used for anything specifying farming, or agriscience, agricommerce... basically, anything that starts with agri- I put into agriculture. Similarly horticulture includes scholarships for those looking to work in the citrus industry, growing kiwifruit, etc, and animal science covers veterinary students. In the ethnic minorities group, the scholarship for Korean people also applies to students who had a parent serve in the Korean War, and in "family of..." there's one for orphans, but most of them were for those who work for, or whose parents work for, a particular company. The gender category is not a euphemism for women - there were a couple of scholarships that were only for men, as well. I put the music grants into art. School specific refers to former students of a particular primary or secondary school, not the university they wish to go to.
So, in descending order:
Location specific: 37
Agriculture: 29
Horticulture: 22
Maori students: 12
Family of...: 10
Disability: 8 (4 deaf, 2 blind)
Animal science: 7
School specific: 7
Sports: 7
Engineering: 6
Health: 6
Gender: 6
Ethnic minorities (non-Maori): 5
First time students: 5
Science: 5
Food tech: 4
Hardship: 4
Business: 4
Environment/resource management: 4
Art: 4
Meat industry: 2
Math: 2
Military: 2
Trades, Religion (Christian), Language (Japanese), Forestry, English: 1 each
If you're wondering, I qualify for exactly none. While I'm semi-disabled, my financial hardship isn't directly related to that disability, and there are people who would need it far more than I do. I'm not okay, personally, at my education blatantly coming at someone else's expense. The same goes for one scholarship that would otherwise be pretty good - people studying an array of subjects that would ultimately lead to working in the field of Maori mental health, which may or may not be restricted to those of Maori descent. It might be one thing if I was for sure dedicated to that field, but honestly, I'm not. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do, just that it will ideally be something helping disadvantaged people at a community level.
On the plus side, work is ramping up again for the next couple of months, so I'm setting a budget. I'll pay my rent, necessities for my rabbits, my WoW subscription (don't judge me) and allow, weekly, $20 for transport and $20 to spend on whatever. The rest should go first to my credit card (I just dumped another $250 on there now since it's payday, that puts the debt down to $610) and then to savings. We'll see where that gets me.
A common refrain in regards to high costs and low government subsidies is that private charity will pick up the slack. In regards to education, this takes the form of scholarships. There are a lot of scholarships, so many that the Funding Information Service has a website database of them - more than 2,200 - which you can search. If you have a subscription. How much is that subscription? Well, from the website...
"BreakOut Easy-Pay prices for individuals:
Start-up fee: $28.75 this includes half an hour access
Subsequent hours: $51.75 per hour"
What? $52 an hour just to find out if there are people who might help you get an education you couldn't otherwise afford? Needless to say, I do not have this much money, and given that I live in Christchurch, the nearest public library that might have free access is a while away - my local library has been demolished. Nor can I use a secondary school's access, as I'm, you know, not a secondary school student.
Given that Massey is my only really viable choice for university (Canterbury doesn't offer Social Policy and Massey has by far the best extramural program), I instead looked at the scholarships section on their website. There are 128 scholarships available for first year students, and after my first look through them I decided to roughly categorise them, for fun. Some scholarships - probably most of them, actually - apply to more than one category, and just because you meet the criteria of one category (say, being a Food Tech student) doesn't mean you qualify for all the scholarships in that category. This is especially true for the Maori students scholarships, as most of them are for particular tribes, and I'd wager there are few people who can demonstrate a legitimate claim to all of those tribes. Most Maori students would probably qualify for two or three of those scholarships at the most.
A couple of extra notes - "agriculture" I've used for anything specifying farming, or agriscience, agricommerce... basically, anything that starts with agri- I put into agriculture. Similarly horticulture includes scholarships for those looking to work in the citrus industry, growing kiwifruit, etc, and animal science covers veterinary students. In the ethnic minorities group, the scholarship for Korean people also applies to students who had a parent serve in the Korean War, and in "family of..." there's one for orphans, but most of them were for those who work for, or whose parents work for, a particular company. The gender category is not a euphemism for women - there were a couple of scholarships that were only for men, as well. I put the music grants into art. School specific refers to former students of a particular primary or secondary school, not the university they wish to go to.
So, in descending order:
Location specific: 37
Agriculture: 29
Horticulture: 22
Maori students: 12
Family of...: 10
Disability: 8 (4 deaf, 2 blind)
Animal science: 7
School specific: 7
Sports: 7
Engineering: 6
Health: 6
Gender: 6
Ethnic minorities (non-Maori): 5
First time students: 5
Science: 5
Food tech: 4
Hardship: 4
Business: 4
Environment/resource management: 4
Art: 4
Meat industry: 2
Math: 2
Military: 2
Trades, Religion (Christian), Language (Japanese), Forestry, English: 1 each
If you're wondering, I qualify for exactly none. While I'm semi-disabled, my financial hardship isn't directly related to that disability, and there are people who would need it far more than I do. I'm not okay, personally, at my education blatantly coming at someone else's expense. The same goes for one scholarship that would otherwise be pretty good - people studying an array of subjects that would ultimately lead to working in the field of Maori mental health, which may or may not be restricted to those of Maori descent. It might be one thing if I was for sure dedicated to that field, but honestly, I'm not. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do, just that it will ideally be something helping disadvantaged people at a community level.
On the plus side, work is ramping up again for the next couple of months, so I'm setting a budget. I'll pay my rent, necessities for my rabbits, my WoW subscription (don't judge me) and allow, weekly, $20 for transport and $20 to spend on whatever. The rest should go first to my credit card (I just dumped another $250 on there now since it's payday, that puts the debt down to $610) and then to savings. We'll see where that gets me.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Why don't poor people just skill-up?
Let's start by getting this out there: I'm the good sort of poor. I'm white, for starters, and I do have something of a financial safety net in that my parents were pretty comfortable growing up. I'm not at risk of living on the streets. If I had absolutely no income, presumably they'd still feed me and all. But they don't have massive amounts of spare money to be throwing at us, especially considering I'm the fourth of five children - even birthday and Christmas presents maxed out at about $50. I have a full high school education and no children, particularly no children born in my teens, nor do I have any substance abuse problems. OTOH I'm (nominally) female and mentally ill, but on the whole, as poor people go, I'm on the more socially acceptable end. I'm not really poor. I'm just experiencing cash flow difficulties.
Here's the heart of the matter: I want to go back to tertiary education next year. Part time. The part time part is a problem, because it means I don't qualify for a student allowance, and the education part is a problem, because it means I don't qualify for the sickness benefit anymore whether I'm working or not. (I hope to be working - part time - but I don't know when my current job will end and how easy it will be to find another.)
After investigations into my chosen field of study (Maori Studies, minoring in Social Policy) and best university for it (Massey's extramural school) I identified the papers I want to take in my first year and went to find out how much it would cost me. A full time student would take four papers a semester. I'll be taking two. The full year will be approximately $2,546.50, as well as textbooks and assorted materials and the cost of traveling up to Palmerston North for a week each semester for contact days. Luckily, I have an uncle there so accommodation is easy enough, but the flights are still an issue.
Ideally, I would also have a reliable computer - this one is about four years old, and it's a laptop, and it's a Mac (sorry, I'm just a Mac person, though I don't see the point in trying to convince everyone else to be one too), so you know just from that that the power supply is dodgy. I've never had a new computer - this one was the closest as an ex-lease - but if I get a new one I expect I would want either a new or a near-new Mac Mini, and the thing about near-new Macs is that they cost almost the same as new Macs. The cheapest new Mac Minis are $949 - I have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, so I'd only need the actual computer. So let's say a reliable computer plus my study costs would top out at about $4,000.
I earn $240 a week, plus my reduced sickness benefit of $80. I pay rent and my travel costs (my work is on the other side of town and I take the bus) and some food, though my rent covers the staples of my diet and the utilities. I currently, as in right now, have $980 owing on my credit card. I also already have a student loan from previous failed attempts at tertiary education, which I think is about $7000 - I have deductions taken off my pay to pay that back, but very small deductions because I don't earn much, and I'm unwilling to haphazardly add to it if I don't have to. Looking at Massey's hardship scholarships, I don't qualify for any of them, and I'm still looking over the other scholarships, most of which apply to particular professional fields and some to ethnic minorities. [Note that I believe this is entirely fair.] At any rate, I'm not banking on getting any.
So, that's pretty much my situation. First, working to get the credit card debt down as low as possible, because the interest on that is ridiculous. Secondly, a good start at the fee money. Thirdly, a reliable computer. Fourth, travel costs. I completely welcome any creative (but realistic!) suggestions - this is going to be my major ongoing project for obvious reasons.
Here's the heart of the matter: I want to go back to tertiary education next year. Part time. The part time part is a problem, because it means I don't qualify for a student allowance, and the education part is a problem, because it means I don't qualify for the sickness benefit anymore whether I'm working or not. (I hope to be working - part time - but I don't know when my current job will end and how easy it will be to find another.)
After investigations into my chosen field of study (Maori Studies, minoring in Social Policy) and best university for it (Massey's extramural school) I identified the papers I want to take in my first year and went to find out how much it would cost me. A full time student would take four papers a semester. I'll be taking two. The full year will be approximately $2,546.50, as well as textbooks and assorted materials and the cost of traveling up to Palmerston North for a week each semester for contact days. Luckily, I have an uncle there so accommodation is easy enough, but the flights are still an issue.
Ideally, I would also have a reliable computer - this one is about four years old, and it's a laptop, and it's a Mac (sorry, I'm just a Mac person, though I don't see the point in trying to convince everyone else to be one too), so you know just from that that the power supply is dodgy. I've never had a new computer - this one was the closest as an ex-lease - but if I get a new one I expect I would want either a new or a near-new Mac Mini, and the thing about near-new Macs is that they cost almost the same as new Macs. The cheapest new Mac Minis are $949 - I have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, so I'd only need the actual computer. So let's say a reliable computer plus my study costs would top out at about $4,000.
I earn $240 a week, plus my reduced sickness benefit of $80. I pay rent and my travel costs (my work is on the other side of town and I take the bus) and some food, though my rent covers the staples of my diet and the utilities. I currently, as in right now, have $980 owing on my credit card. I also already have a student loan from previous failed attempts at tertiary education, which I think is about $7000 - I have deductions taken off my pay to pay that back, but very small deductions because I don't earn much, and I'm unwilling to haphazardly add to it if I don't have to. Looking at Massey's hardship scholarships, I don't qualify for any of them, and I'm still looking over the other scholarships, most of which apply to particular professional fields and some to ethnic minorities. [Note that I believe this is entirely fair.] At any rate, I'm not banking on getting any.
So, that's pretty much my situation. First, working to get the credit card debt down as low as possible, because the interest on that is ridiculous. Secondly, a good start at the fee money. Thirdly, a reliable computer. Fourth, travel costs. I completely welcome any creative (but realistic!) suggestions - this is going to be my major ongoing project for obvious reasons.
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