The first intake of 2023 International students at Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) – Business Division of Te Pūkenga, have arrived from around the world. Staff at SIT’s International House are happily busy, offering a warm southern welcome to over a hundred students from a dozen countries, and helping them to settle into study and life in Invercargill.
Including late arrivals, the February 2023 intake is sitting at 120 students, from China, India, Germany, The Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, South Korea, Nigeria, Peru, Russia, New Caledonia and Argentina, bringing the total number to 440 international students currently studying at SIT.
Michelle Zhao, SIT International Manager (acting) and International Marketing Manager, is very happy with the numbers of international students back on-site again, and especially with the diversity of different countries. “It’s definitely the biggest numbers of new international students to have arrived post-covid,” she said.
Orientations are held for the new arrivals based on the start dates of their programmes. Covering the ins and outs of day-to-day life in New Zealand, students are provided with a check list so they can work through all the requirements to help them get settled in. Topics covered over the two-day orientation include accommodation, IRD and banking, employment, keeping safe, student support services, living in Invercargill and understanding NZ culture.
Guna Baskaran, International Student Support Officer, says the largest intake previous to the current one was the February 2019 intake, when 170 students arrived. Whilst numbers weren’t back up to pre-covid levels, SIT continued to be an attractive option to new students for a number of reasons. “Our tuition fees are reasonably priced, and living costs in Invercargill are relatively cheaper in comparison to larger centres in New Zealand,” he said. For those students with families, the lower cost of living in the south was appealing. Many international students come to SIT to complete postgraduate study - the Master in Applied Management (level 9) is the most popular choice of qualification, there are sixty students enrolled on the programme.