Steven Joyce, the minister for tertiary education skills and employment says he has instructed his officials to explore governance models and international approaches to governance in tertiary education institutions in order to assess the current state of New Zealand tertiary education governance, and to advise on the case for any change.

Mr Joyce made that statement in a reply to a written question from the Labour Party’s tertiary education spokesperson, Grant Robertson who asked whether he intended to implement the National Party policy to: ‘improve the governance and operations of publicly-owned tertiary institutions’.

TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey says that it is important that governing bodies are democratic, and that local communities including staff and students have a say in the governance of their institutions.

“On average democratic, local, independent governing bodies make better decisions, are more inclusive and more economic than the alternative of ‘appointed boards’.  We hope Mr Joyce recognises this in his deliberations.”

Mr Joyce also wrote to Mr Robertson in reply to another question about publishing employment data for graduates, confirming he is intending to implement that policy too.

“Officials are currently investigating indicators of graduates’ employment outcomes that can be derived from existing data sets. Tertiary education providers will be consulted before these indicators are published.”

Mr Joyce also confirmed an intention to implement the National Party policy to “remove differences in funding treatment between public and private providers“.

“I will continue the approach the Government has adopted so far, which is to remove specific differences in funding policy between private and public providers when the opportunity arises,” said Mr Joyce.