Shadbolt to be an escort

He's tripped the light fantastic on Dancing With the Stars, appeared on the big screen alongside Sir Anthony Hopkins and now Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt has a new venture on the horizon - he plans to be an escort.

Shadbolt will personally accompany a group of Inner Mongolian students from Hohhot, the capital, to Invercargill, as part of the Southern Institute of Technology's (SIT) drive to attract more foreign students.

Mr Shadbolt said the city and campus was reaping the rewards of a shrewd campaign that targeted international markets with fewer educational opportunities, such as Mongolia and the Czech Republic.

There are no capping restrictions on the number of overseas students SIT can enrol.

"It's like an educational fringe festival - students from the fringe of Europe, students from the fringe of Asia, all learning through an institute on the fringe of New Zealand. We're getting together and thriving."

Education providers in India and Malaysia and other similar countries competed for students with elaborate promotional campaigns, he said.

"By going off the beaten track like Mongolia, there's no competition."

Mr Shadbolt told NZPA SIT had set up an outpost in Hohhot, which offered students the chance to become proficient in English before they travelled to Invercargill to take up study at its campus there.

The first intake was expected to arrive in October and it was possible there would be up to 30 students in the group, he said. The Invercargill mayor planned to fly to Inner Mongolia and escort them to the city.

Last week Mr Shadbolt hosted a delegation from Hohhot, including its mayor and the president of its university, as representatives from both cities discussed the potential of closer economic ties.

That visit has been followed this week with the arrival in Invercargill of a representative from the Czech Technical University in Prague, which is offering SIT2LRN distance learning programmes through the Masaryk Institute of Advanced Studies.

Barbora Joudalová, head of the institute's management study department MBA programme, said the partnership between the university and SIT would prove invaluable to the people of the Czech Republic.

"From the start I was surprised the (Southland) people are not so stressed and the distant way of learning is completely normal in New Zealand. It's a completely different way of thinking and learning and one of the biggest opportunities for education in Prague."

Through a contractual partnership between the two institutes, SIT delivers the courses while the university offers marketing, enrolment and student support.