NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / New Zealand

First step on way to a tailor-made workforce

20 May, 2002 07:38 PM7 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

By DITA DE BONI

If you want to know why advocates of a knowledge economy despair of our education system, take a look at these figures.

Each year, about 100,000 tertiary students - a third of New Zealand's total - take some form of law, commerce or business degree.

Although many will head overseas when they graduate, they are still far too many for New Zealand's compact business sector to absorb.

Figures for more than 25,000 graduates in 2000 show that 26.7 per cent received commerce and business degrees and almost 30 per cent studied social and behavioural sciences.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Despite a national shortage of trained scientists, only 6.7 per cent completed biological sciences courses, 6.8 per cent maths and 2.2 per cent physical sciences.

But if an ambitious Government plan works, these figures will change.

Last week, Tertiary Education Minister Steve Maharey laid out a strategy for an all-encompassing, Government-controlled tertiary sector unlike anything the country has seen.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The changes will be enacted by the Tertiary Education Reform Bill, which is expected to be passed this week, and in Thursday's Budget Finance Minister Michael Cullen will reveal where the money goes.

Some tertiary courses can expect bigger state subsidies. Others face less money or limits on student numbers.

From 2004, the ramifications will be felt by more than 300,000 tertiary students.

The plan is to churn out the right kind and number of graduates to feed the knowledge economy.

So if you or your child wants to become an accountant or lawyer in 2005, it may not be as easy to do a BCom or LLB.

A funding cap will restrict enrolments by number and area.

If your heart is set on a law degree and you don't make the tightly controlled number for your region, you may have to move cities or pay a lot extra. Or you could try something like biotechnology, which is more valuable to the Government and therefore likely to be heavily subsidised.

Although most people in the sector are happy that finally there is a plan to work to, there is huge disagreement about the model.

The country's university vice-chancellors, polytechnic heads, students and staff as well as interested lobby groups such as the Business Roundtable are horrified at the amount of power that will be vested in the Minister of Education.

And although Maharey stresses that a broad-based education system is still an important requirement, student leaders wonder what might happen to subjects such as classics and art history, which probably contribute little to boosting exports of New Zealand butter to Malaysia.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"Students want a strategy that supports an ... education system based around quality and access, not business needs," says University Students Association head Andrew Campbell.

"The overwhelming focus of this strategy is to align tertiary education provision with economic goals. As a result, courses that fall outside of this alignment appear under threat."

Economically unviable subjects may not be the only losers. Polytechnics could lose funding for their degree courses if the commission decides they are surplus to requirements, and private tertiary providers that receive funding for courses that compete with public institutions may also find themselves constrained.

Currently, almost anyone can offer a course to tertiary students so long as it meets New Zealand Qualifications Authority criteria.

For each equivalent full-time student, the provider receives a certain amount of Government funding - less in private institutions, more in public institutions such as polytechnics and universities.

This method has encouraged competition between providers, including the country's eight universities, and in some cases has led to duplication of courses.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

It has also caused an explosion in the number of private tertiary providers, which last year outnumbered public institutions by 418.

Some of these institutions have plugged gaps in the system - mostly left by polytechnics and other institutions looking to move away from purely practical courses, but others have caused concerns about quality of education.

Nevertheless, a burgeoning private tertiary sector has succeeded in pulling more students into higher education, which is what architects of the free market model envisaged in 1989.

The Learning for Life reforms, introduced in the Education Act of that year, encouraged private operators and gave bulk grants to public institutions.

During the 1990s, tertiary enrolments across all providers increased by about 30 per cent. Maori participation grew by 103 per cent and Pacific Islander participation by just under 120 per cent, mostly in the private tertiary sector.

As Government advisers wrote early last year, "it is clear the changes to the tertiary education system in the past decade have brought significant benefits, including wider opportunities for participation and a more flexible patten of delivery".

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

But the problems were also surfacing.

The Association of University Staff summed up the changes as an "unplanned and ad hoc expansion of tertiary education provision that has proved both wasteful and unnecessary for a country with a small population and limited resources".

It criticised "a narrowing of the range of available programmes, the loss of essential polytechnic trades programmes, a duplication of ... programmes, a decline in the quality of provision".

The Tertiary Education Advisory Committee, set up in April 2000, was charged with solving these problems.

Its recommendations made up four reports to the Government, which have formed the basis of the Tertiary Education Reform Bill and its ideological guiding document, the Tertiary Education Strategy, which was issued last week.

Both require all institutions expecting public funding to supply a detailed charter and an institutional profile to the new commission. The extra work involved in this alone has been greeted with dismay.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Jack MacDonald, who heads South Auckland's Manukau Institute of Technology, says the tertiary sector is sick of constantly changing direction.

"The implication is that by quenching competition, enhancing co-operation, creating charters and profiles, changing the funding formula, creating TEC, and steering us with Government-knows-best direction, all will be well.

"All will not be well. First of all, change is disruptive, expensive and difficult to manage. We in New Zealand change educational policy with every new minister and every new Government. There is much to be said for a relatively stable framework and environment."

MacDonald, who agrees with the Government's aims, urges it to use persuasion rather than enforcement and financial incentives rather than wholesale changes to the funding system.

He adds: "It would be marvellous if the current Government could try very hard to get the support of the Opposition so that all does not change once again on change of Government."

University vice-chancellors, along with the Business Roundtable, are opposed to the lack of autonomy under the new system. They say the inflexibility of a centralised approach will not assist New Zealand to become a knowledge economy.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"While central steering might look persuasive on paper, it generally fails in practice," says Roundtable policy adviser Norman LaRocque.

"It is likely to result in more red tape for institutions, less choice for students, more scope for arbitrary funding decisions and greater micro-management of the sector."

A concern for the vice-chancellors is a possible lack of academic freedom, which they maintain the new Bill will enforce.

The Tertiary Education Commission, which is answerable directly to the Minister of Education, will ultimately decide how much money an institution gets. This will be done on the basis of acceptance or rejection of each institution's charter and profile, which must be submitted and "negotiated" with the Commission.

The new monitoring and invention regime is viewed by the vice-chancellors as a direct threat to institutional autonomy.

But others argue that some universities and polytechnics have not made a great case for unlimited independence in the past few years. As an example, they point to Christchurch Polytechnic setting up campuses in Auckland and Timaru.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Jim Doyle, head of the Association of Polytechnics, says the Government's aims are clear enough.

He agrees with the aim of a collaborative approach, which should remove destructive competition and unnecessary duplication, but worries about the elaborate process.

"It seems to us that the whole business is being grossly overcooked. There is no reason why we could not have been getting on with the process using basically the same structures and basically the same funding system.

"All that is needed is to apply appropriate incentives to make things happen.

"Instead, we have a whole new industry being built up that is almost certainly not necessary."

Herald features:

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Entrepreneurs

Global Kiwis

Proud to be a Kiwi

Our turn

The jobs challenge

Common core values

Related links:

The Government's innovation strategy

Save

    Share this article

Latest from New Zealand

live
New Zealand

Fresh flood threat as thunderstorms, gales lash north; south braces for another deluge

10 Jul 07:00 PM
Wellington

Sir Peter Jackson expands property empire with purchase of school campus

10 Jul 07:00 PM
New Zealand

Herald NOW Weather: July 11, 2025

From early mornings to easy living

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from New Zealand

Fresh flood threat as thunderstorms, gales lash north; south braces for another deluge
live

Fresh flood threat as thunderstorms, gales lash north; south braces for another deluge

10 Jul 07:00 PM

Electrical storms are set to hit at evening rush as Auckland braces for 16 hours of rain.

Sir Peter Jackson expands property empire with purchase of school campus

Sir Peter Jackson expands property empire with purchase of school campus

10 Jul 07:00 PM
Herald NOW Weather: July 11, 2025

Herald NOW Weather: July 11, 2025

Premium
'A sad loss': Why this prostate cancer treatment is 'disappearing' in NZ

'A sad loss': Why this prostate cancer treatment is 'disappearing' in NZ

10 Jul 06:24 PM
Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP