Tertiary performance to be made public

The performance and retention rates of tertiary education institutions are to be made public as part of sweeping Government changes to the sector.

Tertiary Education Minister Michael Cullen yesterday revealed that funding of institutions will be tied to three-year plans from 2008.

The plans must outline how institutions would meet the education and training needs of students, employers and communities, Dr Cullen said yesterday.

Once the new system is running, Dr Cullen said he would eventually like to make some indicators of institutional performance available to the public.

"I don't think one has to be afraid of reasonable information as long as it's reasonably provided and provided in the appropriate context," he said yesterday.

Asked what type of figures might be made public, Dr Cullen suggested retention rates and other measures of outcomes. "I think those are important things for people to measure themselves against."

The Government has flagged its shift away from the "bums on seats" funding of tertiary providers, which has for 15 years been based on student numbers.

That approach led to low-quality courses which caused political embarrassment, as institutions looked to boost student numbers and therefore funding.

Among the more well-known examples were twilight golf courses, dog grooming and Maori singalong lessons.

National's education spokesman, Bill English, yesterday attacked the changes as involving "more bureaucrats", and questioned if they went too far.

"Dr Cullen doesn't need wholesale change to stop the rorts in the system, he just needs to focus on enforcing some simple rules about course quality," Mr English said.

The Government is arguing that the new approach of three-year plans will mean greater certainty for tertiary providers, and greater certainty that the taxpayer money is being spent wisely and in the broad national interest.

"The whole purpose of these reforms at least in part is to try to move away from the situation where we were funding a lot of low value, low quality courses," Dr Cullen said.

The shift to three-year plans will also likely reduce the volatility seen in Government funding of the sector, which reaches over $2 billion a year.

Funding will be provided in two components - a student and a tertiary organisation component.

The new system will start with an expression of priorities from the Government and other parties such as employers and local communities.

These will be incorporated into an investment strategy that includes national and regional priorities.

Tertiary education institutions will have to show that their courses are useful and needed if they are to get funding.

Dr Cullen noted that the tertiary education system is "under-producing" in a lot of trades and technical areas, and "over-producing" in others - such as the "excessive" number of journalism courses available around the country.

Asked if that meant some arts courses at university could be in trouble, Dr Cullen said they could fall into a broader "national interest" view.

"For example, say the teaching of Arabic. There might be very few people who want to do it, but in the modern world it's obviously pretty important that we have somebody in New Zealand teaching Arabic."