Tertiary education minister, Anne Tolley, has confirmed that she will be looking at ways to ‘manage’ growth in tertiary institutions as rolls continue to soar in the wake of the global financial crisis.

In a rare interview Mrs Tolley told Otago University Students’ Association magazine, Critic, the government was looking at ways to manage the cost associated with more people entering tertiary education and training.

“We don’t want unbridled growth, but in a managed way. So it is uppermost in our mind – it is quite clear the trend is there – more people are either attending or staying at university and polytechs,” Mrs Tolley says. “It is a two-edged sword, because at the time of recession you want to make sure that we are keeping people in skills training. Coming out of the recession, we’re going to need a skilled workforce, and so we want to make sure we don’t lose those – but that has a cost to it.”

For the last three months tertiary education institutions have expressed concern about the government’s EFTS cap policy that penalises institutions if they enrol more students than they expected. When initially introduced it was intended to restrict competition between institutions and introduce more collaboration into the sector.  However with rolls now rising across the board rather than students transferring from one institution to another, the policy is placing financial restraints on institutions trying to respond to this increased demand.

Mrs Tolley told Critic the Government will look at either lifting the cap, which has financial implications and would need to be approved in the budget, or allowing institutions to escape penalisation.