Tertiary Update Vol 15 No 44 The Dominion Post reports that up to 80 refugee students in the Hutt Valley will lose out on English language classes because of government funding cuts to foundation studies. Earlier this year the government cut roughly $32 million of funding for level 1 and 2 courses from polytechnics. Weltec [...]

TEU’s national day of action opposing cuts to foundation studies campaign drew widespread publicity and a small initial victory at UCOL where several jobs were saved. As last week’s day of action took place the CEO of UCOL, Paul McElroy announced that the polytechnic would no longer be closing four programmes: the Certificate in Fashion and [...]

Tertiary Update Vol 15 No 41 TEU members are holding protests and meetings at polytechnics around the country today to convince the government to put more money into foundation studies education at polytechnics. The protests coincide with media coverage (from Auckland’s New Zealand Herald to Dunedin’s Otago Daily Times) of the millions of dollars the government has [...]

Following UCOL’s announcements of massive course closures and staff cuts as a result of government funding cuts, other polytechnics are now also announcing course closures and staff cuts. The Nelson Mail reported that Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology has lost about 100 full-time student places, or about $600,000 of funding. “We are looking at what our options [...]

Weltec is pressuring its construction tutors to become Licenced Building Practitioners and use their practicing certificate to sign off as compliant any work their students do while under their tutelage. There are about a dozen carpentry tutors at Weltec and their students build about nine houses a year, which Weltec then sells to the public, [...]

A lobbying disclosure bill that is to be debated by parliament could impact tertiary institutions that currently pay lobbying agencies to influence politicians.  Last year Tertiary Update revealed that private lobbying and consultancy company Saunders Unsworth lists among its past and present clients Massey University, Otago University, the six metro polytechnics, Victoria University of Wellington, and the Industry Training Federation. [...]

Tertiary Update Vol 14 No 32 After TEU members at Weltec took a lightning strike across Weltec’s three campuses (Petone, Wellington and Auckland) earlier this week the union’s bargaining team was able to meet with the polytechnic’s chief executive. Because of those discussions, TEU members have suspended the threat of further strikes or other industrial [...]

TEU members at Weltec walked straight out from their jobs this afternoon after voting to go on strike over pressure from their employer to increase their working hours. The polytechnic wants to increase staff weekly duty hours, remove all discretionary leave from new staff and tell existing staff how they can use their discretionary leave [...]

The employers at the five Ready2Go polytechnics (Whitireia, Wintec, BOPP, Unitec and NorthTec) have now finally agreed that they are indeed ‘ready to go’ and have agreed dates to negotiate with their respective TEU members. The first, Whitireia begins negotiations tomorrow (Friday) and the last gets underway on 3 August. Weltec has joined these five polytechnics in [...]

A long queue of publicly funded tertiary education institutions and organisations are, or have recently been employing the services of private lobbying and consultancy company Saunders Unsworth. Saunders Unsworth lists among its past and present clients Massey University, Otago University, the Metro Polytechnics, Victoria University of Wellington, and the Industry Training Federation. Weltec was recently [...]