Last week we held a competition for readers to suggest what information the Ministry of Education and the Tertiary Education Commission had withheld from the public in their briefings to minister of tertiary education Mr Joyce.

TEU national president Sandra Grey has chosen two winners from the entries we received, The First is from Ian Stuart at Te Wananga o Aotearoa, who sent us this:

“Consider selling certain Universities to national and international private enterprise. Lincoln University, for example, could be sold to a Chinese consortium to use as a training establishment for future Chinese dairy industry workers, and other primary industry workers, working on Chinese-owned farms in New Zealand. This would remove the costs of Lincoln University from the Government books, as well as gaining the revenue from the sale. Likewise, several of the Polytechnics and ITPs could be sold to private enterprise. Nelson-Marlborough Institute of Technology, for example, could be sold to a consortium from the wine industry, which already has a presence on that campus.

Such a move would necessitate a change to the Education Act and as these organisations became industry-owned training staff for their own organisations, they would not need to be accountable to NZQA or funded through TEC, allowing the Government to reduce the size of these organisations, creating further budget savings. Such a move would also reduce the number of New Zealand students actually studying in New Zealand, reducing the costs of student loans and allowances, as well as reducing the SAC funding budget line in the Vote Education”

Our second winner, Gary Elsler from UCOL suggested, more succinctly, that the redacted text read as follows:

“We have no ideas and John’s spent the budget on new carpet for his office, bugger, let’s just blame the Tertiary sector, say it their fault and make up some bull shit that no one understands – so it’s business as usual but don’t tell anyone.”

We sent both winners a copy of Paul Corliss’ book Samuel Parnell: A Legacy, along with a reusable TEU coffee cup.