Labour associate education spokesperson Steve Maharey has slammed the Government's funding announcement for tertiary education as "more of the market driven policies which have been so destructive to the sector over the past nine years".

Mr Maharey said that the Government had already caused difficulties for the sector by delaying the funding announcement which had been due in April.

"The delay was caused by the Government having second thoughts about the White Paper on Tertiary Education. Even the Government came to the conclusion that its policies were never going to deliver the kind of knowledge based society everyone knows New Zealand should be building.

"Sadly the Government has tried to rush the development of its policy and the result is a predictable mess that will take us nowhere.

"The funding announcements today rely on the same old mechanism of increasing competition. There is almost no new money in the package. The end result is that fees will go up and this announcement will not provide the kind of strategic direction in tertiary education that New Zealand needs. It will only lead to more pointless and destructive competition," Steve Maharey said.

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