Lecturer's sacking over email sparks fierce debate

Paul Buchanan. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The sacking of a university lecturer who denied a student an essay extension saying her father's death was a "lame excuse" has sparked a flood of emails to nzherald.co.nz.

In his email, former Auckland University lecturer Paul Buchanan also attacked the "poor quality" of overseas students being accepted for post-graduate courses - and accused the student of preying on "some sort of Western liberal guilt".

Discussion on the site's Your Views section has developed into a debate not just about the rights and wrongs of the sacking of Dr Buchanan but about New Zealanders' treatment of foreigners and two about the standards of universities who are encouraging highly paid overseas students and whether that is at the expense of academic standards.

Among those writing have been a number of Dr Buchanan's students who have praised his approach to teaching - one student described it as an "alternative teaching approach".

A number of tertiary lecturers at various institutions have also written in using pseudonyms and saying that they have been similarly frustrated at feeling under pressure to pass the work of an overseas student even though the student's work is not on a par with an English-speaking Kiwi student.

Other writers have been appalled at the tone used in Buchanan's email and consider the University of Auckland took the right course.

Out of 2596 respondents to a nzherald.co.nz poll that asked whether it was right for Dr Buchanan to be sacked, 36 per cent said yes and 64 per cent said no.

Dr Buchanan, a widely quoted expert on international security, sent the email to a student from the United Arab Emirates telling her that she was "under-performing and under-qualified".

The student, who does not want to be named, said yesterday that her bachelor's degree from an Emirates university was in communications and public relations, with only some papers in politics.

She studied English at Massey University for a year and gained the pass mark of 6.5 in the International English Language Testing System.

In her May 30 email to Dr Buchanan, she said she had the backing of Auckland University's medical centre in seeking the extension following her father's death.

Dr Buchanan replied that she was unsuitable for a graduate degree, and even if she supplied her father's obituary he would not believe that he had died.