19 April 1996 Married . . . with degrees!

Husband and wife Craig and Pam Benbow added a new dimension to the togetherness of marriage by both graduating from Lincoln University on the same day.

In this year's graduation Craig was capped Bachelor of Agricultural Science with Honours and Pam had a Bachelor of Commerce and Management conferred – a rewarding moment in their married life and compensation for the years of separate study in their respective disciplines.

Craig, who came on to university as an adult student after a working on farms around Canterbury, says it's great to be finished and with the financial environment facing students these days he wouldn't like to be starting all over again.

"University study was always something I wanted to do, even though I went into farm work straight from school," says Craig, whose Honours project was in the area of red deer genetics.

In addition to a number of years on Canterbury farms, Craig's pre-Lincoln experience also included an agricultural exchange visit to Canada in 1985 and another trip to North America in 1990. Pam is, in fact, Canadian – from the Peace River district of Alberta.

Having completed her B.C.M. degree – with a double major, Accounting and Computing – she is now working on the NZ Society of Accountants' Final Qualifying Exam for her ACA qualification.

The opportunity to study for a university degree was also the fulfilment of "something I always wanted to do", says Pam, and Lincoln was a "great place to do it".

She particularly appreciated the opportunity to do some tutoring work in computing and mathematics.

The financial commitment sometimes made it hard going as a married couple both studying – "all the ordinary household bills kept coming in on top of what we were laying out to do our degrees, but you have to look at it as an investment," they say.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.