TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey and policy analyst Jo Scott are presenting a paper in Australia today on the damage managerialism is causing to tertiary education in New Zealand.

The paperpaper, When the Government Steers the Market: Implications for New Zealand’s Tertiary Education System, argues that the government’s current heavy handed steering is harming the sector.

Dr Grey and Ms Scott argue that the government has bitten off more than it can chew in its determination to micro-manage the sector. As the OECD notes, tertiary education systems inherently are complex and resilient, which makes steering a daunting task.

Secondly, says Dr Grey, government steering impacts on the autonomy so crucial to a flourishing tertiary education sector.

“What we have seen is the creation of processes to determine strategic direction at the expense of ensuring that the sector has the freedom to teach and research unhampered by whatever political ideology has currency.”

Ms Scott says the model which now characterises the tertiary sector is a low-trust model, in which tertiary education staff are no longer viewed as professionals but as vested interests, who must be monitored and controlled.

“The lack of trust and autonomy is detrimental to the long term future of tertiary education and the commitment of staff to the sector. In fact in most of the government documentation, staff appear to be absent. Government documents talk of is made of ‘stakeholders’ (usually students and business), of tertiary institutions, and of consultation with peak bodies and industry, but rarely with staff,” said Ms Scott.