Fee Rises Outpace Inflation

Fee Rises Outpace Inflation

The current round of fee rises that university councils are announcing is another sign the government’s cuts to education are unsustainable says TEU's University of Auckland branch president Paul Taillon.

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Professional teaching fellows win a new collective agreement

Professional Teaching Fellows at the University of Auckland can now belong to the Academic Staff Collective Agreement at the university. Until now professional teaching fellows (PTFs) have all been on individual agreements. TEU's negotiation team says the right to belong to the collective agreement means those PTFs now have clauses outlining rights around parental leave, redundancy, disciplinary principles, health and safety, promotion, professional development, workload and many other employment conditions.

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Polytechnics lose in L1-2 funding scramble

The uneven way the Tertiary Education Commission distributed its $38 million level 1-2 funding available for tender means some polytechnics will probably have to cut courses and restructure or reorganise say TEU national president Sandra Grey. WITT is the first polytechnic to speak out about the funding , telling the Taranaki Daily News this morning that Taranaki's unique Māori dialect may soon be extinct with the loss of foundation-level funding to the polytechnic.

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REAP members call for alternative education strategy

"We had one family on the East Coast where one member of the family enrolled in a REAP programme and that led to three generations of the family participating in adult education. Four of the five family members have now graduated and developed a love of learning. The grandfather, three daughters, one son and one mokopuna all participating in tertiary education through wānanga. This shows the importance of learning amongst familiar people in a familiar environment."

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Minister told democracy crucial to governance

TEU is seeking a meeting with the minister of tertiary education Steven Joyce, because of its concern that proposed changes to university councils could be undemocratic and uneconomic. The union's national president Sandra Grey says the union wants to meet with Steven Joyce to present its position paper on good governance before he places any pressure on councils to change their structures in an undemocratic manner.

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TEU elections for national council begin

TEU members will get to vote in several different elections over the next couple of weeks with six people standing for election to the union's council, nine standing for its industrial and professional committee and seven standing for the national women's committee. Most members will get to vote in the elections for council, as well as for the Industrial and Professional Committee and the National Women's Committee via an online ballot, over the next couple of weeks.

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Other news

The State Services Commission released details of remuneration for polytechnic chief executives and vice-chancellors last week. Overall, there are a lot who appear to either have taken a cut in pay, no pay rise or a small pay rise that may be in line with what TEU members are receiving. The vice-chancellor at University of Auckland has fallen down one band of $10,000 to earn somewhere between $630,000 and $639,999 but is still the highest paid public servant in the country, ahead of the Prime Minister by quite some margin - State Services Commission

“We have a growing list of job losses, and as the Reserve Bank acknowledged in its last Monetary Policy Statement, many exporters and firms competing with imports are struggling. A drop in interest rates could help stimulate investment and be part of a strategy to bring down the exchange rate. In turn, this could stimulate more job creation – or at least slow the job losses,” - CTU Economist Bill Rosenberg

The president of a Tennessee seminary told a tenured professor that his views were offending prospective students and possible donors and that he should look for work elsewhere. Christopher Rollston, a professor of Old Testament and Semitic Studies at Emmanuel Christian Seminary, wrote an opinion article for The Huffington Post’s religion section about the marginal status of women in the Bible. “To embrace the dominant biblical view of women would be to embrace the marginalization of women,” Rollston wrote - Inside Higher Ed

A man caught posing as a medical student for two years despite being rejected from the university programme went to "great lengths" to hide what he was doing from his classmates, staff and his family - New Zealand Herald

University lecturers in Sri Lanka have ended a 3-month long strike after the government agreed to a pay raise and funding boost - Colombo Page

The crisis of education as a public good and the disappearance of public intellectuals - Counterpunch

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