Editorial: Less choice, more tertiary drafting

For two years a team led latterly by a former Education Minister, Russell Marshall, has been redesigning tertiary education at the request of the sector's present minister, Steve Maharey. The last of the panel's four reports was made public on Wednesday. The first three were greeted by Mr Maharey as developments of "our" thinking; this one was "their" report.

It was an unconscious distinction, no doubt, but a telling one. The Tertiary Education Advisory Commission (Teac), as Mr Marshall's team was called, finally turned the thinking into concrete decisions and some of them were immediately too much for the minister. He instantly rejected the advice to stop suspending interest on student loans during the years of study - a Labour manifesto policy that makes it more sensible to borrow for tertiary education than to pay if you can.

Other suggestions risked upsetting the Government's commitments to regional development and Maori and Pacific students. And, wisely, he ruled out automatic funding increases in line with a proposed "tertiary education price index". That would be a cost-plus mechanism if ever there was one.

As for the rest of the suggestions - notably more restrictive entry to universities - the Government invites comment by the end of January. Clearly nothing will change before the election.

At the election, if not before, Labour will have to explain why it thinks it necessary to ditch the tradition of largely open entry to universities in this country. Its task is made harder by the Teac report's recognition that open entry has largely healed a glaring deficiency of the New Zealand economy of yesteryear - too few school leavers proceeding to tertiary education.

The report acknowledges that the present method of funding (public money largely follows the choices of fee-paying students) has been highly effective in meeting a "massive" increase in demand. As a result, New Zealand's participation rate in higher education is now above the OECD average.

Furthermore, the committee dismisses the claim that a rise in numbers has been accompanied by a drop in standards. It finds "no substantial evidence of widespread decline in the quality of tertiary education".

If it ain't broke, voters may ask, why fix it? The answer is that this Government thinks it can do better for the economy if it has greater control over tertiary funds. So the Teac report proposes a new formula for funding all tertiary institutions, which essentially means that students' choices will count for less and the Government's economic and social priorities will count for more.

Mr Maharey has talked often of a desire to divert public funds from "oversupplied" career-oriented degrees such as law and commerce to sciences and engineering, the keys to a "knowledge economy". Yet there is no evidence that a system of choice is underinvesting in science and technology education. There are plenty of courses available in those subjects and no reports of people unable to find a place in one of them. If the Government considers not enough students are seeking the subjects, the solution is not a tertiary drafting system.

The better solution, which the Teac report also advances, is a dedicated fund for world-class university research. The report in fact suggests three such funds to enable institutions to keep talented staff and postgraduate students who are doing promising projects. Universities worthy of the name aspire to be institutions of original thinking and discovery as well as tuition. There is a case for funding their research independently of enrolments, although in time an investment in leading research should attract more enrolments.

In devising a basis for tertiary investment decisions, the commission has tried to strike the right balance between students' preferences and Government priorities. It also endorses bulk funding in the interests of preserving the autonomy of universities and other institutions. Its proposals are intricate and the Government seems far from convinced of them. It is probably the most important economic investment any Government can make. It must get it right.