EIT scored a graduation bonanza this year, with a boost in graduate numbers across three campuses and the first graduates to gain business qualifications in Auckland.
Significant features of graduation were the high proportion of Māori and growing numbers of younger achievers.

EIT Hawke’s Bay managed its record number of graduates by spreading the traditional capping ceremonies over three ceremonies, during two days. Just under 865 diplomas, bachelor and honours degrees, postgraduate diplomas and master degrees were awarded in 2013, up five percent on 2012.

Some 30 percent of these graduates were Māori – in line with the Hawke’s Bay campus’s student demographic but well above the region’s. And the proportion of younger people gaining degrees from EIT Hawke’s Bay is increasing – 31 percent of the graduates were under 25, up from about 29 percent in 2012.

A total of 120 diplomas, degrees and post graduate qualifications were awarded to those who had completed EIT Tairāwhiti programmes last year on the East Coast – a 30 percent increase on 2012. Seventy-one percent of the graduates were Māori and 38 percent were under 25.

The average age for Tairāwhiti graduates was 33.

This year was the first capping ceremony for EIT graduates in Auckland. The 11 Graduate Diploma in Business graduates have also studied English as a second language.
As always, the capping ceremonies were opportunities for whänau, friends and academic staff to join in the celebration of graduate success.

Napier hosted EIT Hawke’s Bay’s traditional graduation parade twice. On Thursday, 20 March, jubilant graduates from the Schools of Applied Science, Business, Computing, Tourism and Hospitality and CAD marched through the city streets.

And on the following day, the downtown parade comprised graduates from the School of Education and Social Sciences, ideaschool and Te Manga Māori joined bygraduands from the Schools of Nursing and Health and Sport Science who held trenchers in hand ahead of their capping at the afternoon ceremony.

Traditional cloaks, waiata and haka made the Tairāwhiti graduation ceremony one of the best yet. Some 500 people packed into the Showgrounds Event Centre in Gisborne to support the graduands.