“Why not study in the capital of adventure tourism?” asks Thrift, who is enrolled in the snowsport business management program at Queenstown Resort College on New Zealand’s South Island. “My friends are so jealous.”
Snowsports is a specialty within QRC’s adventure tourism management program, where students learn more than just the visitor experience. They also learn how to develop and operate different models of adventure tourism companies, and the skills needed for leadership, marketing, human resources, writing business plans, communications and more.
“It’s all internationally transferrable,” explains Program Manager Chris Warburton. In fact, QRC has an agreement with Thompson Rivers University in B.C., whereby QRC grads can automatically go into the third year of Thompson Rivers’ degree program. Other agreements are in place with some schools, including Ontario’s University of Guelph, where students can study for one or two semesters at Lincoln University in N.Z. and pay the regular U of G tuition fees, rather than higher international student tuition fees.
Adventure tourism is just one of many N.Z. post-secondary sports programs that are open to Canadian students. And Education New Zealand is openly courting international students, especially from North America, for these programs that go beyond elite performance to include sports business administration, recreation management, sports massage, outdoor leadership and even sports turf management.
Great environment for sports
“Very few people are elite athletes,” says Don Milham, Team Manager at the School of Sport and Exercise Science at Waikato Institute of Technology, known as Wintec. “But health and wellness is across the lifespan. We have a great environment for that.”
Wintec is located in the small city of Hamilton on the North Island, where winter daytime temperatures are usually 10 to 14°C. And that’s part of what makes N.Z. a sports-mad country: it’s easy to get outside and be active when the temperature rarely dips below zero, and then only in the mountains.
“It’s a very sports-dominated society,” says Stewart Brougham, Wintec’s Director of Internationalization. “It imbues society with a view that sport is something you should continue with….That passion for sports fuels the supply industry. You need people to run and manage the sports clubs, to manage and coach the teams, work for companies or teach sports in schools.”
N.Z. offers Canadian students some attractive post-secondary (they call it “tertiary”) options. You can study in the land of the Kiwi for a semester or two, take courses during a gap year, do an exchange program, complete an entire diploma or degree, or improve your English language skills in a multitude of program options. You can even earn credits that will be recognized by your Canadian college or university, through partnership agreements or individual negotiation. And studying abroad can offer a compromise between gap year travel and going on to post-secondary.
“I really wanted to travel, but Mom wanted school,” says Thrift, from Whiterock, B.C. The compromise was QRC. “Queenstown has blown me away—the connections you make. I’ve done things there’s no way I would have done before, like canyoning.”
Lincoln University student Jenn Halliday, also from B.C., urges Canadian students to apply for N.Z. programs. “You’ll never know if you could have made it if you don’t try,” she says. “You can make it work and you can get here.”
Studying at Lincoln—a beautiful treed campus surrounded by farmland just outside Christchurch—is a dream that Halliday made come true with hard work to help offset the costs. While studying abroad can be more expensive than in Canada, she was able to bring down the price of her Bachelor of Sport and Recreation Management (see “The Practicalities” on page xx). And PhD students take note: you pay domestic tuition fees in N.Z., not the higher international tuition fees that undergrads pay.
“The process of studying in another country enriches you,” says Brougham. “You’re a bit more thoughtful, you learn to be more tolerant. It just changes you.” And that’s something you get no matter where you go.
N.Z. is an easy place to live and study. The culture is different enough to be interesting, yet familiar enough that you’ll feel at home amongst friendly people.
“I found New Zealand like home, but with a twist,” says Halliday. “There are so many advantages: you learn about yourself and different cultures.”
Many sports programs
As well as bachelor’s degrees, Lincoln offers postgraduate degrees and certificates in sport and exercise physiology, parks, recreation and tourism management, plus an elite Sports Scholarship Program and the Asia Pacific Football [Soccer] Academy.
Wintec offers certificate programs in sports massage, outdoor education and recreation, fitness industry training. Bachelor programs are available in coaching, nutrition, exercise physiology and biomechanics, and there’s a one-year teaching program. The communications school offers sports journalism.
Otago Polytechnic—based in Dunedin on the South Island, but with other campuses as well—has certificate and/or diploma programs in a range of subjects: snowsport instructing, avalanche safety, outdoor leadership and management, physical conditioning, and sports turf management, plus a bachelor of applied science in physical activity, health and wellness.
QRC’s adventure tourism management program, with its specialty in snowsport business management, includes paid internships.
All four of these institutions—plus dozens more around N.Z.—offer English language courses for students to learn or improve their skills before enrolling in the program of their choice. English courses vary from less than a month to three years. Different programs and post-secondary institutions require different levels of English skills—check each institution’s requirements.
N.Z. has a population of just four million people, so its colleges, universities and polytechnics (degree-granting institutions that are like a cross between college and university) are small too. Classes are small and professors really get to know their students.
“A student said to me, ‘I can’t believe you gave me your cell phone number so we can call you,’ ” says Chris Hutchinson, Lincoln’s academic coordinator for sports management. “Here, it’s first-name terms.”
“Anybody who comes here can be a big fish,” says Milham.
Hands-on, practical skills
The sports programs—whether at the university degree or college diploma level—focus on practical skills and career building.
“Real people with real skills get real jobs. That’s always been my philosophy,” says Gary Smith, program manager for Otago’s Sports Turf Management program, where students complete paid internships at golf courses, rugby fields and cricket pitches—and then get snapped up by employers.
“When you come out of the course, you’re set up to go into the industry,” says David James Moseley, 20, studying outdoor leadership and management at Otago. “Last year we lived on a beach for a week, rock climbing and sea kayaking.” After completing an internship, he now has a full-time sea-kayaking job waiting for him when he graduates.
“Some educational institutions lose sight of the end goal, which is jobs,” says Charlie Phillips, CEO at QRC. “We’re really focussed on completing that loop.” Students are treated as professionals right from the first day, when they’re greeted with: “Welcome. You’re starting today, not in two years’ time.”
Students wear uniforms appropriate to their studies—for the adventure tourism students, it’s black track pants and black QRC T-shirts—and are marked on grooming, attendance and punctuality. “It’s all about getting ready for the industry,” says Phillips. “Ninety-seven percent of graduates get jobs.”
Lincoln’s Bachelor of Sport and Recreation Management degree includes a requirement to complete 480 hours of practical work in a sport or recreation role. For example, students recently organised an Olympic gala day for 800 school children, while others handled the registration and finish-line facilities for the Tour of New Zealand 10-day cycle race through the whole length of the South Island.
“Ours is a very enthusiastic, hands-on, fun degree, but does contain robust academic theory before the fun stuff,” Hutchinson says. “We’re working quite closely with industry, not just in Christchurch but around New Zealand.”
Early involvement in research
Many of the sports programs also emphasize early involvement by undergrad students in research projects “so by the time they get to the masters level, it’s not new to them,” says Milham, leading a tour through Wintec’s biomechanics lab. One student is periodically jumping on a metal plate on the floor, sometimes using his arms and sometimes not, while his colleagues look at a laptop measuring his impact. Another lab houses an altitude machine and a heat chamber where students can control for heat and humidity during experiments.
Leah Hutching, 22, is a second-year masters biomechanics student researching regular shoes versus toe shoes, and how human mechanics change at different speeds. She hopes to work for a sports shoe company after graduating from Wintec.
At Lincoln, Mike Hamlin, academic coordinator for the sports scholarship program, describes research into new technologies aimed at boosting performance, including compression garments, altitude training for rugby players going to Johannesburg, and the effects of blood-flow restriction on netball athletes while they’re training. Result: increased muscle endurance and strength. (Netball is similar to basketball.)
Jenn Halliday says studying in N.Z. has been the best thing for her. She talks regularly with her parents via Skype. “They’re supportive and proud of me that I’m brave enough to take on the world,” she says.
So what would she tell Canadian students thinking of studying in N.Z.?
“I would tell them to go for it,” she says. “Don’t just dream about it, but actually do it!”
Education New Zealand and Air New Zealand invited the author to tour N.Z. tertiary education schools and sponsored her trip.
