We have just put out Labour’s tertiary policy. It follows on the big effort that we’ve made to lift skills in our workforce. No need to remind people that times are tough and it’s tough getting any new money. But I think we’ve got a pretty solid mix here that will make a difference.
The key aim is produce the best graduates we can – and keep them in NZ – to help us grow a smart, high-value economy.
The policy has some specifics targetting some of our smartest. It puts back the post-doctoral scholarships for scientists who finished their PhDs that was canned last year. This is critical for not only keeping our best here and giving them time to consolidate their studies, but bringing some of our best back. After all, we’ve already invested massively in these people.
We’ve also put additional funding aside for funding our very best where they are world beating. The ‘brilliant scientist’ concept is simple – give sufficient funding to our best scientists and academics to employ the staff they want, buy equipment they need and then let them get on with it. Smart people attract others – from around the world. Backing our best with resources will grow expertise in core areas where our talent is top shelf. And we DO have some fantastic talent. Those researchers will receive funds personally and are free to choose the NZ institution – or business – where they want to set up.
Other parts of the policy: we must maintain and raise the levels of our universities. Recent results show we are slipping in the world rankings and there’s little doubt that funding is a key part. We run universities that are some of the most efficient in the world, where an extra dollar can really make a difference. Our policy maintains our level by inflation proofing our universities and sets our commitment to increase it.
We need to maintain the affordability of our tertiary institutions so all NZers that reach the standard can access a high quality tertiary education, no matter what background they come from. There’s aspects in the policy here for that too, fixing tuition increases at 4% and restoring $2 million to the Training Incentive Allowance to give a lift to those who want to get a tertiary education – solo mums for example – to get some support. Remember this is the one that helped Paula Bennett before this government axed it.
And we’ve put back the money for adult and community education. Cutting $13.5 million and collapsing it was a travesty. More than 150,000 people no longer access night schools who once did. This is a no-brainer for people wanting to get back into learning.
I admit to not having read the policy in full. However, looking at David’s comments re post doctoral scholarships for scientists, it appears the inevitable will just be delayed. I have a few good mates who are scientists, and none work in NZ. They can earn far more working in the States and Europe. Scholarships may hold them here for a year or so, then off they’ll go.
With regard to the scholarships, adult and community education, tuition expenses etc, where is this funding going to come from? Borrowing?
I agree with Vino, my first thought was “How will a Post Doctoral Scholarships for Scientists have ANY influence on whether people go abroad?” they are completely unrelated sorry. People will go where the work and big bucks are…
as you say, “…will grow expertise in core areas where our talent is top shelf…”
Basically what this does, is give our people a higher level of education to be enable them to go abroad and find work easier.
One might say that it’s sort of OPPOSITE to what we want.
If vino and Bob are right, we should make these kind of people fully user pays seeing as there is no benefit back to the community.
So……no meaningful tertiary funding change?
The key aim is produce the best graduates we can – and keep them in NZ – to help us grow a smart, high-value economy.
New Zealand is a country of 4 million, in a world of 7 billion. Trying to keep our graduates here is absurd. The experiences, contacts, and ideas you get exposed to offshore simply cannot be simulated here.
I would far rather see an education policy that says “It’s awesome you want to go overseas, and show the rest of the world how awesome our education system can be. We’re going to do everything we can to help you bring back that knowledge, those contacts and new ideas, when you’re ready to come home.”
“Labour will retain the Fee Maxima system and keep the annual maximum fee movement at its current rate of 4%. This will ensure tuition fee increases are kept under control and
students aren?t over-burdened with debt.”
“Labour will keep interest free student loans for all borrowers who remain in New Zealand, and for those students continuing to study overseas, or who are working for New Zealand government agencies overseas.
Labour will work with other countries to ensure that borrowers who leave New Zealand and do not continue to make payments on their loans are identified and payment arrangements made. Measures will include establishing reciprocal tax agreements with countries, such as
Australia and the UK where significant numbers of students with loans are working.”
So the same old, same old, around the overall vision of Tertiary Education? It just seems unfair that those who where educated for free are now making students take massive loans for education. Why not take a leaf out of the Greens books and aim for a return to free Uni education?
Actually, I think Bob and Vino are way off the mark, on the evidence. Yes, our scientists do go overseas, of course it’s generally a positive move to get other experience, but we’re also attracting some back along with international scientists. That’s the nature of the business.
A few weeks ago 560 scientist signed a letter to Mapp asking the post-doc scholarships be reinstated. Their argument was compelling. Many of them had come back to be in NZ as a result of getting a scholarship or had come to NZ for it. Others carried on in NZ with the funding to publish their PhD and further extend their expertise. and shape up their careers.
Without the post-doc scholarships the loss of our best brains is guaranteed. With them a critical part of a scientist’s career path is locked in and they are more likely to forge a career here.
NZers will always go offshore in their 20′s, but not everyone does so, the OE is not the bastion of ALL NZers. IN any event, most come back at some point, having made some money, lived the big city life and wanting to settle down in Godzone.
I think it is as important to fulfill the potential of our brightest as well as out most vulnerable. We punch above our weight in so many areas and always have.
I’d like to hear some concrete programmes implemented by the current government to address the brain drain they made into an election issue, so CRUCIAL they thought it to be for our future.
Make adult education funded as a % the university/tertiary funding. Maybe it would be 2% Im not sure .
And have a scale the more students who graduate the lesser fees they have to put into the adult education funding pool.
“A degree is the new UE” people say. There seems to be nothing in your policy that addresses that issue. Young people without real academic ability or interest would still have to stay banged up in the tertiary education system for years just to get jobs that their parents could have got with UE and their grandparents could have got with SC or less. I have every sympathy with some graduates who do not want to repay their student loans. The ones that languish in electronic sweatshops (or worse) doing jobs that could be done by somebody with a few years primary education. They were robbed of their youth. They are being robbed of their money. They should never have had to go to university in the first place.
How about a policy that makes something like the old UE the new UE? That would really attract some votes. Me too but … policies will not.
Sounds good. TIA reinstated, great. So tired of listening to the govt saying they support us and have something in place when the reality is you are either too old (it seems only under 20′s, only helping teenage parents, there are more than just teenage parents out there)
What about the Course related aspect of student loans. Will you be able to borrow this for part time students, what is left of part time options that is.
Are Labour really so desperate to gather votes, that they have to prop-up the “student politics” shambles that exists in New Zealand?
Talk about minority support, the amount of real interest in student associations in most universities would be in the single digits.
The only people that care about student politics, are the people that benefit from them – the people that vote themselves in as “student president”.
Some stories I have heard about $1200 compulsory fees at Victoria University, and the “student president” getting 100 more votes than the second-place No Confidence vote tells you everything you need to know.
And that is out of a total few thousand votes of many more thousands of students who are forced to pay these ridiculous fees.
While I don’t agree with some of the rhethoric bounced around by various polictical parties on this issue, I will say this.
It will be a cold day in hell that I ever study at University in New Zealand while compulsory fees are enforced, so the extreme minority can waste it on vans and piss-up fests while I have to work long hours to pay my student loans back.
“And we’ve put back the money for adult and community education”
I think the issue with community education courses is productive value for taxpayer money. I’ve been on a few community education courses – some of them were fun, but I can’t say that any of them were of productive value – lets see… there was the playing squash course, the yoga course (great humour value), the gun-licence course (which didn’t involve actually getting a gun-licence) and the kayaking down the river course. None actually involved passing any sort of exam. A friend went to an “accounting” course and received a certificate that she’d “passed”, also without actually being assessed in any way.
If Labour did put money back into community education, it seems to me that they would need to get some value out of it – the education needs to provide some sort of qualification and there needs to be proper assessment.
I’m with you A Mother, getting the TIA back would be great!
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“Others carried on in NZ with the funding to publish their PhD and further extend their expertise. and shape up their careers.”
David, and when they’d shaped up their careers, the majority would have scarpered offshore (just like two of my close friends who have doctorates).
“A few weeks ago 560 scientist signed a letter to Mapp asking the post-doc scholarships be reinstated. Their argument was compelling. Many of them had come back to be in NZ as a result of getting a scholarship or had come to NZ for it.”
But you are confusing the few brilliant scientists that get funding to say, cure cancer, with the many who are employees of say, Asurequality’s food safety business. Getting a scholarship does not imply they will stay.
Bea, there is much more to community education that qualifications that are directly related to paid work. That is why it is called community education. Education in a democratic society should engage with a broad range of endeavours, activities and areas of skill, knowledge and understanding. It should aim to enable people to participate more actively, confidently, and, when necessary, critically in that society. It is as important for people at various stages in their lives, to be able to develop skills for leisure pursuits, social interaction, and understanding and contributing to debates on society, politics, the arts etc.
A society where people are more fully engaged and included, will also indirectly positively contribute to the economy in many ways, and in some ways that may not have been foreseen in advance. It’s also something that’s not easily measured by objective assessments focused on short-term learning goals.
Ard Right ,you would be lucky to qualify for university, as your comprehension is not up to scratch.
Association membership at Auckland ( and I think Canterbury) has been voluntary for some years now. In both cases most students have opted in.
As for the fees, its free to join the students association.
Note that the university has a student services levy , which is compulsory whether you join the students association or not, which would be about $600 per year.
Theres your voluntary membership in action.
NO FREE RIDE
Labour put so much effort into fighting VSM and gained zero electoral traction. I’d put money on the VSM issue being quietly dropped before Labour gets re-elected.
This is fairly lacklustre policy—a bit more funding here and there. It doesn’t address the “A degree is the new UE” issue raised here.
New Zealand has some of the highest tertiary graduation rates in the OECD. We need to ask whether we are getting value for money and value for time.
Utterly disappointing that Labour’s tertiary education policy sits comfortably within the well trodden and crooked path of the centre-right. Yearly fee increases of 4% under fee maxima regimes quickly begin to add up.
What happened to your policy of implementing or moving towards a universal student allowance three years ago? It’s incredibly dishonest to support means testing at the 2005 election, favour universality at the 2008 election, and then return to means testing (until a student is 24 years old?) at the 2011 election. Good heavens.
So it’s no surprises that the party that introduced user pays in tertiary education continues to advocate for it, in an ever so slightly less aggressive style than the tories – coke and diet coke.
kane , you are another one like Ard right, who lacks some common knowledge. Labour did not introduce user pays for tertiary education. The nineties were when national was in power.
Lets not forget the term ‘Earn or Learn’…that is not an age discriminate term.
Many people have experienced life changing professional & personal upheavals since the global financial crises. Returning to further your tertiary study (attune skills or add to your experience base) should be an option for Generation X, as much so as for New Zealand youth.
In most cases Gen X don’t wish to leave N.Z. at all, we already know its the best place to live for our children and selves.
To develop a highly productive economy we need highly developed skills that can be applied. There is a huge gap of qualified professionals in our work force, yet we wish to improve our global competitive advantage…..
Yes… we’ve been ‘winging it’ a bit in New Zealand and winging it well, with our talented people & abundant natural resources. Now lets make the most of our talents/assets by developing skill sets & innovation.Perhaps research will lead to development of EXPORTABLE GOODS. Imagine what that would do for our economy.
This policy is FANTASTIC. Personally I’m taking it with me today to show it to talented/hard working level 7 students who don’t want to leave N.Z….they just want to contribute in N.Z. as best they can.
Cherie
@Ghost – yer comment is right on the money! This is why VSM sucks, it puts SAs more under the uni’s thumbs and doesn’t save the student money anyway!
Yee haa Cherie!
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Carol:
“Bea, there is much more to community education that qualifications that are directly related to paid work. That is why it is called community education.”
If someone enters a course uneducated and emerges at the other end educated, then that is measurable by assessment. Community education is not unmeasurable, however, under the previous scheme, it wasn’t measured, hence a bunch of junk courses. It should be. There is a limited pool of taxpayer money – it needs to be put to best effect for the population. For that to occur, the outcomes need to be measured.
Here’s a couple of other examples of how that money could potentially have better effect for the community:
Kane: “universal student allowance”
Cherie: “Returning to further your tertiary study”
And here’s another one – community education that is measured and assessed and has an outcome.
When these community education courses were in vogue, they weren’t generally completely free to the participants. The lack of controls over the courses potentially meant that both the taxpayer and the participant were spending money on something either fairly worthless, or (as in the case of friend’s “accountancy” course) on being taught something that’s actually incorrect. Measurement holds the people collecting the money accountable.
Bea, you have largely produced an argument for monitoring the quality of teaching, content and input of community education courses. That is something I totally agree with.
However, many of the deepest learning done on some courses, doesn’t really become evident until after a long period when certain things click into place for an individual. This is especially so for community education, and also for some kinds of learning e.g. involving critical thinking.
This obsession with short term outcomes in education became foregrounded with the rise of neoliberalism in the 80s, and the application of business models of accountability to education by assessing immediate, short term learning outcomes. It results in a tendency to teach to the test/assessment outcomes and a focus on superficial behaviourist objectives.
There can be quite a bit of diversity in what each individual gets out of a community education course, and the assessments may not measure what is most significant for some individuals. Furthermore, many people who would gain something from the course, would do so precisely because the course is not assessed – i.e. it would contradict some of the desirable aims of such courses, which, by definition, aren’t providing vocational or academic qualifications.
“kane , you are another one like Ard right, who lacks some common knowledge. Labour did not introduce user pays for tertiary education. The nineties were when national was in power.”
Ghostie, I think you will find that Phil Goff, as Minister of Education with responsibility for tertiary education, introduced a flat $1250 tertiary tuition fee in 1990, as well as some form of means testing around the allowance. The fourth Labour Government were turfed out of office in late 1990.
National introduced the student loan scheme and means tested allowances to 25 in 1992, and fees continued to balloon when they were in power in the nineties. Sadly, however, fee increases did not stop and nor were they reduced or eradicated (like a decent social democratic party would advocate) between 1999 and 2008 under Labour-led Governments. The freeze on fee increases was incredibly brief.
As someone who would like to return to study, to full-fill my potential, there is nothing here for me. Raise the taxes on the wealthiest, institute a financial transactions tax, stop foreign owned banks charging us to lend imaginary money and taking the profits off shore, invest in high end technology and industrial design. Renationalise core services like power generation, which is produced with OUR water and using plant WE paid for. Run at cost. Bring back 5 years of universal student allowance, contingent on performance, and access to living cost loans for those who may have had a bad year but are willing to pay for another chance. Remove Nationals bullshit back dated loan eligibility. This weak and vague policy statement is the death knell of our country and does nothing but ensure our slide into a low wage slave economy to be milked by the global corpo-pirates.
Labour- nothing but vision-less neo-liberal lite. The free market fanatics have had their way with this country as they have with the rest of the world… And our children will pay the price with a miserable, dog eat dog poisoned world of dwindling natural resources, as an uneducated slave class to the global greedy.
Pathetic.