TEU Tertiary Update - Volume 12, Number 14

FINANCE MINISTER PROPOSES TERTIARY EDUCATION CUTS

Finance minister Bill English stated in parliament yesterday that he intends to cut tertiary education commitments to fund the probation service and corrections service. He then confirmed his intention this morning on National Radio’s Morning Report:

“Tertiary education is one area where the previous government has made some very large commitments against future budgets where they haven’t actually allocated the money. And we’ve signalled that we’re not going to be able to keep those commitments and don’t intend to.”

TEU President, Dr Tom Ryan, criticised the minister, saying for the sake of students and ordinary working people facing the recession, he needs to reconsider.

“The message Mr English’s statement sends to students and potential students is that there will be space in prisons but not in polytechnics, wānanga and universities. Tertiary education can help working families learn their way out of a recession that they didn’t create, but we need realistic investment to make that happen.

ALSO IN TERTIARY UPDATE THIS WEEK:
1. Govt scraps employment equity unit
2. Fiji teacher sacked for democracy speech
3. Don’t measure teachers on non-completion rates says Ryan
4. Recession pressures universities to privatise
5. Teaching graduates decline
6. Polytechnic enrolments threaten to break cap
7. $5 billion budget for Australian higher education

GOVT SCRAPS EMPLOYMENT EQUITY UNIT

The Department of Labour’s Pay and Employment Equity Unit (PaEE) is to be disestablished, following an announcement yesterday by minister of labour, Kate Wilkinson. The unit will close on 30 June.

"Achieving the goal of closing that pay gap can't be realised by having a singular focus on the state sector. This issue is the responsibility of all employers and good employers will work to tackle it,” says Ms Wilkinson. Her media statement made no mention of how she anticipated bad employers would react.

TEU women’s vice president Sandra Grey is extremely unhappy. “Currently there are 15 polytechnics and institutes of technology, 1 university and one wānanga all engaged in pay and employment equity reviews through the PaEE unit, many of them very near completion. Every review that has been done so far in the public sector has shown women being paid less than men for doing the same work. We anticipate that will be the case in the 17 tertiary education reviews too.”

CTU president Helen Kelly says the decision shows an absolute disregard for the thousands of women workers in this country whose work is undervalued simply because they are women.

“Women in New Zealand are paid on average at least 12 per cent less than men doing the same jobs. In the public sector the gap is as much as 35 per cent. This unit has been absolutely core to assisting… identify discriminatory employment practices and take steps to eliminate them."

Dr Grey says that unions will continue the pay and employment equity work in the tertiary sector, even without the government.

FIJI TEACHER SACKED FOR DEMOCRACY SPEECH

TEU president Tom Ryan says the Fijian government should reinstate sacked teacher, Tevita Koroi.

Fijian Teachers’ Association president, Mr. Tevita Koroi, was dismissed last week from his position as principal of Nasinu Secondary School. Mr. Koroi was suspended from his school in December 2008, after his comments at the launch of Movement for Democracy in Fiji (MD Fiji). In his comments Mr. Koroi said it was two years since the December coup and it was time that Fiji returned to democracy and parliamentary rule. He also said that the interim government must take the country to free and fair elections as soon as possible.

“The Fijian government is punishing a dedicated school principal for fulfilling his role as an elected trade union leader. That’s simply not fair - and a denial of his basic human rights,” said Dr Ryan.

“The decision was harsh and inconsistent. The current non-existence of Fiji's High Court, Appeals Court, and Supreme Court, together with the abolition of the Public Service Appeals Board, means Mr. Koroi has no avenues to appeal the decision. We think that the government needs to step in and overturn the dismissal.”

As well as being the president of the Fijian Teachers Association, Mr. Koroi is president of the Council of Pacific Education (COPE), which is a regional organisation of education unions from the South Pacific region, including New Zealand education unions NZEI Te Riu Roa, PPTA, TEU and ISEA. Mr Koroi also is a well known Fiji rugby union administrator.

TEU members are emailing their concerns to the Fijian government at: http://www.teu.ac.nz/?p=2376

DON’T MEASURE TEACHERS ON NON-COMPLETION RATES SAYS RYAN

A Ministry of Education report, released last week, showed that New Zealand has one of the lowest higher education qualification completion rates in the OECD – just 58%, compared to Australia’s 72%.

The report attributed the high non-completion rate of bachelors degrees in New Zealand tertiary institutions to the relatively large proportion of part-time students, and to a significant number of students changing their programmes of study part way through to something different from what they had started.

TEU President Tom Ryan, however, has argued that this explanation does not paint the full picture;

“While those are important factors, the other issue to consider is the financial imperatives on our institutions to get students into courses. Some students are missing out because they are not getting the institutional advice and support when they take up study – and when they disappear”.

“Sadly, it’s a hangover form the old ‘bums on seats’ funding model, where institutions set up courses to get students in the door, and then happily collected both their money and the government subsidy.” But some now are still unconcerned about those students who never turn up to class. “Staff call these students ‘ghosts’ because they simply never see them. In some first-year courses, ‘ghosts’ can comprise over 10% of total enrolments”, said Dr Ryan.

Dr Ryan says the issue is of particular importance to lecturers and tutors across the sector because government and tertiary institutions have been talking about student completion rates being included as a dimension of teaching staff performance evaluation.

“As long as tertiary institutions fail to act responsibly on the problem of ‘ghost’ students”, warned Dr Ryan, “staff should not allow student completion rates to be used as a measure of professional performance”.

RECESSION PRESSURES UNIVERSITIES TO PRIVATISE

“How we can get the state to become as concerned about the potential collapse of individual tertiary institutions and our entire public tertiary education system as they are about banks and car firms?”

That is the question former AUS president, Jane Kelsey, is asking in a paper she has just presented to the British University and College Union (UCU). In it, Professor Kelsey warns that privatisation of public universities is a looming threat in the current economic crisis.

Professor Kelsey argues that privatisation represents a paradigm shift that aims to transform public universities and colleges from quasi-constitutional entities that generate and transfer knowledge in ways that advance social progress and foster participatory democracy into producers of commodities that are given an economic value and then bought and sold on an internationalized market. She warned British education unionists that the commodification and commercialisation of university education inevitably results in academic censorship.

“Commercial imperatives trump academic freedom, including criticism that displeases donors, sponsors or sources of research funding.”

Dr Kelsey says tertiary education unions, together with their global representative, Education International, have been remarkably successful in generating awareness in many countries and caution among many governments over the commercialisation of education, especially in relation to the global trade agreement, GATS. This has helped to paralyse attempts to extend pro-market regulation in the education sector. However, unions need to be aware that the current recession is placing increased commercial pressures on private and semi-private education institutes to further commercialise tertiary education and generate greater profits from the sector.

TEACHING GRADUATES DECLINE

A Ministry of Education report released last week shows bachelor degree completions in teacher education declined by 380, or 15 percent, between 2002 and 2006. Much of the decline was between 2002 and 2003, and then there was a drop again in 2005 and a slight pick up between 2005 and 2006. Likewise graduates in curriculum and education studies declined by 360 or 28%. Data for 2007 and 2008 is not yet available to confirm current trends.

The data reaches only to 2006, but it still indicates a concerning trend in New Zealand’s most popular field of specialization, according to TEU president, Dr Tom Ryan.

"Workforce planning in schools and early childhood centres is reliant on having a reasonable estimation of how many teachers are projected to enter and leave the profession over an extended period of time. It seems that the Ministry now faces the worrying conundrum that not only does it not have an indication whether it is educating enough teachers to teach our children, but it can’t be sure because its data is two years old. "

Dr Ryan says it is too early to be sure if the fall in graduates is a result of a gradual shift by teacher education providers from three year degrees to four year and three-plus-one degrees. He noted that this is a particularly relevant issue for teacher supply in early childhood education.

"Teaching is a profession that has always valued and fought hard to have the highest level of tertiary education. However, teacher education also remains a highly politicised area of tertiary education, with politicians regularly opting to implement their latest political fad regardless of supporting evidence, " concluded Dr Ryan.

POLYTECHNIC ENROLMENTS THREATEN TO BREAK CAP

ITPNZ has confirmed that many Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs) are reporting large jumps in enrolment numbers, putting them close to the TEC's 103% student number cap.

"[Enrolment at] Waiariki Institute of Technology is 53% up at its Taupo campus, while Otago Polytechnic is seeing strong demand in courses on the Department of Labour's skills shortages list, " says ITPNZ Executive Director, Dave Guerin,

The Tertiary Education Commission is scheduled to receive official 2009 statistics on institution enrolments tomorrow (15 May). ITPNZ plans to release survey results shortly thereafter, which will “paint a national picture of this year's enrolment trends.”

Mr Guerin says complicated TEC requirements and the threat of sanctions for over-enrolment are restricting ITPs' responsiveness to student, industry, and community demand.

TEU president, Dr Tom Ryan, says the government now faces a dilemma with its upcoming budget:

"There’s no doubt that we need to increase funding in the ITP sector to help many hard working New Zealanders who are trying to find a way through the recession. The current EFTS cap is not meeting the sector’s needs at present. However, a simple return to the old competitive ‘bums on seats’ model is not the solution either. "

"Students are enrolling not just to shelter from the storm, but for an education and future employment. These institutions need more staff, with more time to focus on teaching and learning. It’s urgent that we invest in the people who keep our polytechnic and institute of technology running. " Dr Ryan concluded.

$5 BILLION FOR AUSTRALIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

The Australian government has committed an additional AU$5.3 billion to tertiary education and research over the coming six years, at a time when the government generally is tightening its purse strings.

Additional funding for teaching is to be linked to agreed performance outcomes on quality, participation and completions rates. Also, a new regulatory body, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, will be formed to oversee standards and performance.

Universities will be encouraged to enrol students from poor backgrounds by a new loading payment, worth $325 million over four years.

The Government says its plans are about "planting the seeds for future growth" once the economy recovers.

The centrepiece of the higher education strategy is nearly AU$1 billion help universities with the removal of caps on student numbers from 2012. This is part of the government’s plans to increase the proportion of 25-to-34 year olds with a degree or higher qualification from 32 per cent to 40 per cent by 2025.

"Australia's recovery depends heavily on the quality of our human capital, on our ability to educate our people and to innovate in business," the Prime Minister said. "The Government is determined to give opportunities for talented Australians to participate in higher education no matter what their background."

Last year's Bradley Review recommended a funding boost of more than AU$6 billion.

The Australian Education Union, which represents TAFE workers, has welcomed the Government's commitment to provide guaranteed education and training places for all Australians younger than 25, but says that the budget did not provide adequate funding for additional TAFE places for young Australians facing unemployment.

"Regrettably the Government has not been forthcoming with adequate funding measures that give true meaning or expression to these important initiatives," Australian Education Union president Angelos Gavrielatos said.

From Andrew Trounson at the Australian

-----

TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz

© Scoop Media