Are those student loans actually worth it?

Tahu Potiki gets it all the time. Just last week, a stranger in the pub bailed him up wanting to know what the big-shot Maori with the flash university degree was up to. And in the meetings and conferences he attends as part of his job as chief executive of the country's third biggest iwi, Ngai Tahu, people automatically assume there's a BCA, MBA or some such other academic acronym behind Potiki's six-foot-four frame.

"Everyone assumes I'm a product of university," says the man who made it to number 27 on the list of New Zealand's 50 most powerful people last year.

Little do they know that Potiki, who heads an organisation with an asset base of more than $300 million, never finished high school. His educational shortcomings haven't stopped him from getting to the top of an iwi held out to be the Treaty of Waitangi settlement success story. And nor should the lack of a degree stop anyone else from doing what they want to do, he says. He certainly doesn't know who of the Ralph Norrises and Hugh Fletchers he deals with in any given week is tertiary-trained, nor does he care.

Indeed, single out any of New Zealand's top corporate bosses,and it's hard to pick who has a tertiary education.

Who's more successful? Well, that's always going to be subjective. Look at the players - in one corner, weighing in with a handful of degrees and hefty theses between them, there's Telecom's chief executive Theresa Gattung, Port of Tauranga head John Mayson and entrepreneur Jeremy Moon, while in the other are street fighters such as TradeMe's Sam Morgan, MacPac's Bruce MacIntrye and Potiki - and decide for yourself.

But when it comes to what leading business bosses look for in a prodigy, what's more important - book smarts or street smarts?

Potiki has a definite opinion on the potential shortcomings of university training.

"University ... potentially screws you. A lot of people who have done second-rate MBA degrees end up getting locked into boxes and can't think outside of the square. They may be very good advisers and ... a safe pair of hands, but I don't think it encourages them to lead. Just about the opposite really, it can neuter them and makes them risk-averse."

But Potiki's not against tertiary education fullstop. He dislikes the proliferation of "pseudo-polytechs" that focus on training for a job, rather than creating the intellectual go-getters he'd like to see more of.

The ability of campus life to create sheep rather than shakers is also a sore point with Bruce McIntyre, the university drop-out behind international adventure equipment business MacPac. He's highly critical of all levels of education in New Zealand.

"The whole education system works to strip you of your potential because it rejects individuality; it works against free thought and creativity; it absolutely denies common sense in favour of memorisation," says McIntyre.

For Potiki, McIntyre and others, innate personality and experience are more important.

"I want somebody that gets on well with people without having to compromise their own values and sense of self, and gets things done. That has nothing to do with a university education," says Potiki.

Of course, that's easy for an almost-40 chief executive of a top business to say. A fresh-faced 20-something competing for a job against dozens of others, may find it difficult to get that first foot in the corporate door without a degree.

Take Sam Morgan, the wunderkind of TradeMe, which in just six years has 1.1 million members and top place in the Deloitte/Unlimited Fast 50 competition for last year's fastest-growing business.

Morgan, who dropped out of a mix-and-match degree at Victoria University, struggled to find work as a 26-year-old in London.

"I simply wasn't making it through the piles of CVs. A university degree is not a big deal when you're already in a job, but it's a very big deal when you're in-between jobs."

Morgan's now an employer himself, and says he happily hires people who don't have letters after their name. In fact, some of the employees he's had have entire alphabets after their name, but have been useless on the job.

"What seems to have happened is that a degree is a prerequisite to get to the starting line. If you don't have a university degree, you just have to be extra good at what you do."

Telecom high-flier Theresa Gattung is trying to remember if everyone on her executive has a degree.

"They probably have, but it wasn't important in their appointment. Ten, 15 years on, what you've done is far more relevant."

Like the others, she doesn't think a university degree is needed for business success because "it's so much about an innate sense, and judgement, and dealing with people". But Gattung agrees with Morgan - her degree was the "entree" to her first meaty job, and she probably wouldn't have gotten where she is now without it.

For Jeremy Moon, of premium merino clothing company Icebreaker, a sound academic degree is a must for those who want senior roles.

"We don't hire managers that aren't tertiary qualified. I don't care what discipline they come from - my marketing manager has a degree in law - I just want to know they've had a chance to learn how to think in a structured way and know the value of analysis and the disciplines behind critiquing and presenting information."

Moon is quick to point out that he also doesn't think a degree is essential for business success - it just makes it easier - and it's not the only place that teaches free thought. But it worked for him.

Moon did a commerce degree, a post graduate degree in marketing and then a master's, all at Otago University. He even toyed with the idea of doing a PhD.

It was a treasured eight-year experience that allowed him to leave the reputations and teenage demons of high school behind, make some enduring friends, challenge himself intellectually, gain confidence and meet inspirational lecturers who continue to help him today.

"It's really nice at that quite difficult time in your early 20s to have had a place to explore and find yourself, and build great social networks and extend yourself in other areas."

Confidence is also something business think-tank Icehouse start-up manager Dave Wrathall gained at university. Wrathall, who helps new companies get up and running with advice on business plans and strategies, says his first degree in science hasn't been much direct use, but he did find the experience and his post-graduate degree in marketing extremely helpful.

"As an employer, you're looking for evidence that they can do a job. A degree is a form of evidence. If they haven't got a degree, that's okay as long as there's other proof that they can get a job done." Requiring tertiary level education of all senior job applicants is not a hiring tactic Port of Tauranga boss John Mayson employs. A truck driver can be a better leader than a Harvard graduate, he says, and a focus on academic attributes may mean missing the rough diamonds.

Mayson has an MBA and a maritime qualification which sees him able to steer both the boardroom and the ships that come into port. He freely admits he would not be where he is today without a degree, but he is far from favourable in his opinion of academics.

"There's an unreasonable amount of snobbery attached to universities. Today's lecturers seem to think they are beyond question; that their word is gospel."

Mayson also worries about the quality of education today's varsity students are getting.

"I wonder how rigorous the processes are ... Too often tertiary institutions seem to be more interested in bums on seats."

Labour says it is trying to curb the brain drain by wiping interest on student loans. But critics fear the policy will only encourage more teenagers to rack up tens of thousands in debt to do what they see as the university equivalent of twilight golf - seemingly irrelevant courses such as anthropology and philosophy - because they don't know what else to do; they can get an interest-free loan to do it; and they don't want to go into a trade.

The snob factor applied to academic pursuits over trades irks Potiki, who started out as a fitter and turner and says people need to realise it takes both physical and mental smarts to build a house. But that's a whole other argument.

He and others agree a degree should be more than just the next step after high school on the road to a career, but it doesn't necessarily matter what you study.

Morgan uses his wife as a case in point. She did "just a BA" in classics, which proved to be "absolutely useless" in getting a job. It wasn't necessarily a waste of time, says Morgan, but it's important people realise a university degree is no guarantee of work.

Universities have also got to do their bit, says Wrathall, to keep courses relevant and not be too bogged down in theory. Auckland University's new entrepreneurial papers are a key example.

However, Wrathall agrees a degree in any subject has value to an employer looking for evidence that an individual can get things done.

For those who scoff at the likes of anthropology and psychology, Moon has an answer.

"Business is about influencing the way people think. Business is ultimately about humans, so social sciences are important too."

Similarly, Gattung is from the "broad church" school of thought. "People should study what they're passionate about and what they're good at. What we enjoy is what's going to bring us success."

That life is one big education and differs for every individual is a point the Gattungs, Moons, Maysons and Morgans of the world agree with.

Gattung, who went straight to university after school, says she sometimes wishes she'd had time in the real world first, "and then things like human resources management would have made a lot more sense to me than as a green 18-year-old".

Mayson also believes in taking time out before diving into the books. He left school and went to sea at 16, and didn't start his degree until he was 44. One of the most important pieces of advice Moon has for anyone considering university, is to go because they want to.

"Some of the people I watched fall apart a bit at university were the ones whose parents put a lot of pressure on them. They got to a point where they realised they were doing it for someone else, when at that stage of your life it's about building yourself."

There's one more argument the chief executives, managers and directors of the country's top businesses agree on. No matter how many degrees someone has, or how many years they spend at universities, some people just aren't cut out to be leaders.

"University can give people extremely valuable knowledge, but one cannot learn how to sell, how to evaluate a problem, how to implement strategy, how to lead others, even how to work alongside others, from any course," says McIntyre.

Moon concurs: "If the drive's not there to start with, it's not going to be there when you finish."

- Herald on Sunday