Minister of tertiary education Steven Joyce yesterday announced a seven percent increase in international student enrolments at public tertiary education institutions – driven mainly by the polytechnics, which were up 15 percent. The eight universities reported a four percent increase in their international tauira numbers.

Mr Joyce, who has repeatedly confirmed that there is unlikely to be any new funding from the karauna for public tertiary institutions despite ongoing domestic pressure on rolls, again used the opportunity to instruct institutions to look for private sources of funding to make up the shortfall.

“Further development of the sector will bring real benefits in terms of economic growth plus additional income to allow our tertiary institutions to grow.”

“If we want our universities to successfully compete for the top academic talent with Australia and other comparable countries,” said Mr Joyce, “then they will need to keep developing all their revenue streams.”

Meanwhile the Manuwatu Standard reported that about 1600 potential tauira will miss out on places at Massey University’s summer school after it closed its roll three months earlier than usual to avoid exceeding its funding cap for the year.

Te tumu whakarae o TEU, Dr Tom Ryan said it was ironic that the minister had identified the need to compete with Australia but yet again failed to look at the different policy approachs between the two countries.

“Academic talent is not leaving for Australian tertiary institutions because they have more international students but because they have chosen to invest millions of dollars of new funding into tertiary education and into tertiary education salaries.”

For more on the government’s aspirations to match income levels with Australia see this column in the New Zealand Herald.