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, [...]

Tertiary Update Vol 15 No 8 Employment negotiations for thousands of university staff at seven of New Zealand’s eight universities will begin in three months’ time, and union members are already working out what the main issues they need to see addressed to improve their working life. One of the [...]

Tertiary institutions are in a constant state of restructuring says TEU deputy secretary Nanette Cormack. Last week TEU’s national council heard that there are 59 reviews affecting 500 jobs currently underway across 17 different tertiary education institutions. “500 members are about 5 percent of our membership. When one in twenty [...]

Tertiary Update Vol 15 No 4 Brett Alcock says his previous job at a privately owned tertiary institution was a string of short-term contracts. “Many teachers, including myself when I was there, have their contracts rolled over. But the fact that they are not on permanent contracts creates a pervasive [...]

Global educational benchmarking agency Quacquarelli Symonds, known as QS Stars, has evaluated Massey University’s performance and given it an overall rating of four stars out of five. While there is no mention of how much Massey paid QS for its ranking, Ireland’s University College Cork (UCC) last year said it [...]

Trainee and beginning teachers are angry over proposed changes to teacher training programmes at Massey University. In a paper entitled “College of Education Academic Reform”, the university is proposing radical change to initial teacher education. It proposes to discontinue all undergraduate teacher education by cutting its three-year Bachelor of Education [...]

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 [...]

Despite revelations that Massey University almost doubled its profit last year from $5.3m to $10.2m, its vice-chancellor Steve Maharey is denying allegations that the university is hoarding money.   “We’re well-managed, but don’t mistake that as we have the money coming from the Government to guarantee quality education forever,” he [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]