Public tertiary funding to go to private institutions without a quality guarantee
Liz Gordon MP Fri Aug 27 1999
The Alliance said today's announcement that private tertiary institutions are going to get access to public money
without the promised quality assurance authority being set up amounts to the privatisation of tertiary education without
any quality control.
'The tertiary white paper said private tertiary institutions would get more public money but only after a quality
assurance body called the Quality Assurance Authority of New Zealand (QAANZ) was set up. QAANZ was to take on much of
the role of checking the quality of education as the NZ Qualifications Authority had failed in that role,' Alliance
Education Spokesperson Dr. Liz Gordon said.
'But QAANZ has not been set up and with the announcement in the Bright Future package of yet another tertiary review it
doesn't look like it will happen before private institutions get their hands on millions of dollars of public money.
'We have already seen the collapse of one private tertiary institution costing students and the government thousand of
dollars. Why is the government continuing to fund the private sector when they have no way of guaranteeing the quality
of the courses?
'To give public tuition subsidies directly to private training institutions is the outright privatisation of tertiary
education. Max Bradford is not only content with axing four of our universities but now he wants dodgy private ones as
well,'
'What is worse is that this government does not divulge the level of funding to individual private tertiary
institutions.
'This money used to go to our Universities and Polytechnics and was accounted for publicly. It is now being syphoned off
to these unaccountable and sometimes dodgy private businesses,' Liz Gordon said.
ENDS