Tertiary partnership will benefit wider community

Sir Wira Gardiner, a most impressive speaker, has publicly endorsed the Bay of Plenty Tertiary Partnership and urged the local community to get in behind it.
He is the chairman of the Tertiary Education Commission, which manages the $3.8 billion tertiary budget. And he presented a vision of the Bay of Plenty partnership last Friday at the Tauranga Chamber of Commerce Leaders in Business lunch.
It is significant that Sir Wira is endorsing the partnership which will have immense ramifications for Tauranga and the wider Bay - with a new downtown campus.
The tertiary partners comprise University of Waikato, Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi in Whakatane, with significant support from SmartGrowth and Priority One.
But why is it relevant to us? It's not only that we lose large numbers of our young people from 18-25 years who need to go elsewhere for certain types of tertiary study.
It's also that our community has lower-than-average participation in tertiary education which contributes to our low wage/low skill economy compared with other regions.
In addition, we also have skill shortages in high value (mostly high knowledge) sectors which will stagnate or move elsewhere if we can't staff them.
It is far easier to attract high potential business start-ups if we have a comprehensive tertiary presence that supports their ventures.
Another important issue is that we have a disproportionately high number of micro-businesses, and a comprehensive tertiary presence can provide the foundations for more firms to grow.
This means there will be a better spread of small, medium and large businesses, which results in a much stronger and more powerful regional economy.
We also lack ambitious start-ups in the technology/knowledge sectors, coupled with insufficient research and development to support the growth of new and emerging industries.
A tertiary presence with research grunt means we can target and support the commercialisation of high value, high growth technologies.
We need to diversify more so that we aren't overly reliant on residential construction, logistics and horticulture.
The key to our growing our economy is to encourage highly specialised business with global markets.
A high end local tertiary provision and research eco-system facilitates knowledge specialisation and competence.
The impact of a campus in the Tauranga CBD will be mammoth in terms of construction and supply for local firms, as well as the ongoing spending impact of thousands of students and staff for the retailers and others.
There will be strong relationships with iwi, and support in the post-settlement era, and positioning Tauranga as a 'University City' can only be positive. Look what it has done for Dunedin and it has a smaller population than Tauranga.
The Tertiary Partnership is likely to help grow our per capita GDP faster than the national average. It will assist the value of the sub-region's exports to grow, and help total business profitability to improve.
Average household income as a consequence will increase faster than the national average, so that there is a reduction in the percentage of households in the bottom quartile of national income, which is where we are currently.
It will improve our ability to attract skilled labour and help to address current and future skill gaps. It will enable us to increase the skill level of our workforce relative to the national average.
The Bay of Plenty Tertiary Partnership is a massive opportunity for the community and we all need to get behind it.
Max Mason is chief executive of Tauranga Chamber of Commerce, which provides networking and support services for local businesses. He can be contacted on email: max@tauranga.org.nz or phone: (07) 577 9823