EIT Hawke’s Bay’s campus in 1980 when it was known as the Hawke’s Bay Community College. Photo / EIT
Michael Fowler was a business lecturer at EIT for 18 years before becoming an historian in 2018.
One of the most persistent myths of Hawke’s Bay history (and to be honest, one I believed myself at one time) was that Hastings and Napier squabbled over a site for a university, and as such lost out to Palmerston North – which became Massey University in 1964.
Not so.
This all began from the Hawke’s Bay Centennial Council casting about for ideas for a memorial in 1958 to celebrate 100 years of Hawke’s Bay being a province.
The MP for Napier, Mr JJ Edwards, is credited with the idea, and was supported by the MP for Hastings, Mr EJ Keating, and Hastings Mayor, Mr WE Bate.
Arguments of where a proposed Hawke’s Bay University would be sited never occurred as a 20 hectare site was given in 1960, and accepted by the Centennial Council from Margaret Hetley at Otatara, near Taradale (present EIT Hawke’s Bay site).
After the gift of land was given, acting chairman of the Centennial Council, Hastings mayor, Mr RV Giorgi, stated it was hoped Hawke’s Bay would get its own university in 15 or 20 years’ time. His timing was about right – but not for a university.
An act of Parliament called the University of Hawke’s Bay Trust Act 1960 gave the necessary powers to create a Centennial Memorial Trust Fund to establish a university.
Two years later, in 1962, the University of New Zealand, which existed for 91 years, ceased to exist and its four university colleges in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin became universities in their own right.
They would be joined by two more universities in 1964 – the University of Waikato and Massey University.
Hamilton was in 1964 New Zealand’s fourth largest city, so their university was established to meet the needs of its population and surrounding areas. Massey University had since 1926 been an agricultural college, which was named as Massey Agricultural College in 1927.
The notion that Hastings and Napier squabbled so the university went to Palmerston North is not true – as Massey Agricultural College was well-established, and had aligned itself with Victoria University, so its transition to a university was easier. There were no plans to establish a university in Hawke’s Bay by the government, they had merely given legislation to form a trust to allow certain functions, such as raise funds.
A squabble of sorts did arise when increased industrialisation in Hastings and Napier identified a need for a technical institute (polytechnic) which Napier wanted within its boundaries.
When the Hawke’s Bay Polytechnic Investigative Committee was formed in 1966, its membership spanned Hastings and Havelock North local bodies, Hastings and Napier Chambers of Commerce and Napier and Hastings high schools – but not Napier City Council.
Taradale mayor, Arthur Miller, speaking on this stated, “Let us from now on speak with one voice as a region, and banish any parochial feelings on such important matters, especially the siting of these institutions”.
In the end, Napier and Hastings high schools formed in 1968 their own committee and joined what was now called the Hawke’s Bay Polytechnic Promotion Committee.
The strong united voice from the Hastings and Napier high schools worked, and in October 1969 a government decision was made to create a Vocational Tertiary Department in Hawke’s Bay to offer the commercial and trades training that were being performed at high school night classes.
Nothing would move fast, and the start date was to be 1972 – however, if the Labour Party swept to power in that year’s general election it promised the planned vocational institute would become a community college.
Labour won, and after Arthur Miller convinced Margaret Hetley that the land would never be used for a university, she agreed it could be used for the community college – solving the siting problem.
Hawke’s Bay Community College opened in 1975, offering a range of vocational training and community education programmes. The first director was John Harre.
When the government funding for community education programmes was disestablished, the Community College began to grow in line with the vocational training needs for the region – such as computing, nursing and wine science.
In line with this evolution in vocational training, the name was changed to Hawke’s Bay Polytechnic in 1986, and 10 years later in 1997 to the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT).
Degrees were added in the late 1990s to EIT, fulfilling a long-held ambition since 1958 to educate (and hopefully retain) students here by the offering of degree qualifications.
One big change that occurred to EIT was the merger with Tairāwhiti in 2011.
The creation of Te Pūkenga or the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology in 2020 centralised 25 polytechnics and industry training organisations.
Up to that point EIT had only four directors /CEOs before the CEO position (and other senior manager positions were disestablished) and had a long history of being well-managed.
I believe EIT’s strength was that all the four directors/CEOs and its senior management were heavily invested in engaging with the local community, and was less effective with the centralisation from the creation of Te Pūkenga.
After the challenges of Covid-19 (as all others had to face), there was the widespread damage done to the EIT campus in Hawke’s Bay by Cyclone Gabrielle, taking considerable time to restore.
This year it is EIT’s 50th birthday, and what an excellent present it was to learn this month that it will once again be an autonomous and locally led institution, and be able to fulfil its full potential as an educational asset to Hawke’s Bay.