Overseas Universities Luring Kiwi Students

Overseas Universities Luring Kiwi Students

“The low cost university system that our children access today risks becoming the poor quality system that our grandchildren desert tomorrow,” says the Vice-Chancellor of The University of Auckland, Professor Stuart McCutcheon.

He delivered this warning at the University’s Distinguished Alumni Awards dinner in Auckland this evening.

Some of New Zealand’s best and brightest — students and academics — were being attracted away by top overseas universities, particularly in Australia, the United States and Asia, said Professor McCutcheon. “Just last year, for example, the University of Adelaide offered all-expenses paid trips to New Zealand students thinking about studying there.

“The Australian National University advertised for professors from New Zealand, offering to take not only the professors themselves, but also their entire research groups. Our Economics Department lost six staff in just that one year – all of them to foreign universities.”

It was perfectly understandable that students and families wanted education at a low cost, he said. Yet a university education created an appreciable private good for students in terms of higher lifetime earnings. Universities also generated a high return on the public investment in them (14 to 20 percent annually in Australia).

“Yet despite these benefits, and despite its high overall level of investment in tertiary education, New Zealand invests in its universities at a rate well below the OECD average — a rate just 60 percent that of Australia and 40 percent that of the US. Little wonder that those countries can regularly send out raiding parties to capture our best and brightest.”

The challenge for the taxpayers was “to ensure that our politicians get the balance right”, said Professor McCutcheon. “We want an accessible, low cost university system, but we must not let that happen at the expense of our universities’ quality. At the moment the balance of investment strongly favours reduction in cost over the maintenance or enhancement of quality.

“If New Zealand persists with current policies, then the low cost university system that our children access today will become the poor quality system that our grandchildren desert tomorrow because of the opportunities afforded them by vastly better universities overseas. That will be a disaster for New Zealand.”

ENDS

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