Student shortfall costs polytech jobs

Low student numbers and high costs were responsible for 29 redundancies and 15 early retirements at NorthTec last year, a financial report says.
The report, which was tabled at a NorthTec Council meeting on Friday, said NorthTec was forced to find savings in expenditure due to an unbudgeted increase in third party contracting costs of $1.2 million and the loss of $1.3 million in student fees revenue.
Student enrolments dropped after a major management re-structure at the polytech early last year, the report says. Thirteen NorthTec management positions were slashed last year in response to a government decision to cut the polytech's operating budget by about 20 per cent in 2011.
The polytech was also forced to give $1.2 million to third party providers just to maintain the full amount of its Tertiary Education Commission funding last year.
But even after abnormal expenditures of $1.4 million - mostly due to redundancy payments and early retirement settlements - the polytech was still able to post a $1.8 million profit last year.
NorthTec chief executive Paul Binney said student enrolments last year had been down on expectations by about 200 full-time equivalent students.
"There were a number of significant challenges for NorthTec in 2010 that created uncertainty for staff, particularly related to the re-structuring, and this impacted on our enrolments."
While some of the staff laid off last year might be re-employed for short-term specific tasks and others might apply for different roles, there was no plan to re-employ the staff made redundant last year, Mr Binney said.
With student enrolments for 2011 on similar levels to last year, Mr Binney said he could not rule out more redundancies this year.
"Our staffing budget for 2011 is slightly higher than actual numbers employed in 2010. However, as we respond to changing demands for courses and look at how we can improve our services, there is always the possibility that some redundancies may occur as we re-direct resources within NorthTec."
Mr Binney did not say how many of the staff made redundant were teaching staff, nor whether courses would be cut as a result of the redundancies.
"There is always some movement in courses offered year to year, but we are planning to have at least as many students on our courses in 2011 as we did in 2010."
Mr Binney's report to the NorthTec Council said that, while some programmes had good enrolments this year, others were running at low levels and some course had been cancelled.
Low enrolments for the electrical off-job training course this year had resulted in NorthTec cancelling the course and transferring 16 students to a different training organisation in Whangarei.