Tertiary Update Vol 14 No 34

Massey University has sent its staff a glossy magazine encouraging them to set up regular donations back to the university. The direct-from-salary donations will all go to the Massey University Foundation – a registered charity that supports teaching, learning and facilities at Massey.

“We all recognise that we want to build and maintain Massey as a world-class facility. We are, therefore committed to significantly increasing our income to invest in our future,” the brochure tells Massey employees. “This fund will ensure that vital areas such as teaching, research and learning remain first class, allowing us to drive New Zealand forward and compete in the global academic market place.”

Staff can choose either to have their donation go towards unrestricted projects, or they can specify a specific cause, such as the Massey University Staff Fund Appeal, which will support academic and general bursaries for the development of staff.

Massey notes if each of its 3000 full time equivalent staff gave $6 per fortnightly pay Massey would gather around $9 per employee or $650,000 a year.

TEU national president Sandra Grey says it is astonishing that well a regarded university should feel the need to ask its own workers to dip into their pockets so it can ‘remain first class’.

“Luckily, for Massey one of its alumni is currently the tertiary education minister. Perhaps it should be asking him, rather than staff, for the funding to ‘remain first class’?”

Also in Tertiary Update this week

1. New rules for student services funding
2. Trades training sparks political debate
3. Draper and Francey to contest vice-presidency
4. Synchronised student protests draw police response
5. TEU women celebrate Suffrage Day and MMP

Other news

“The sector sorely lacks strategic leadership, in part because of the games played between university managements as they deliberately construct a faux market in which they pretend to compete. That approach is, in my opinion, the single most damaging dimension of the university sector. I am often tempted to advocate a return to the University of New Zealand as an antidote to corporatisation and its effects” –  Nigel Haworth

“The annual increase in food prices of 6.6 percent in the August 2011 year has outstripped wage increases of just 1.9 percent as shown in the Labour Cost Index”, says CTU Secretary Peter Conway – CTU

“The QS World University Rankings last year raised questions over the investment in teaching resources in New Zealand as faculty to student ratios slipped across the sector,” QS vice-president John Molony said – New Zealand Herald

Australia has dramatically improved its position with among the highest proportion of 25 to 34 year olds with a degree, according to a new OECD report – The Australian

More students enrolled in higher-level qualifications in 2010, while the number in lower-level certificates continued to decline. Participation rates in tertiary education increased for younger people. Upward trends in international student numbers continued in 2010 – Ministry of Education enrolment data

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TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day.