The Labour Party’s new tertiary education spokesperson Dr Megan Woods has challenged the government in parliament last week over its policy to  abolish student allowances for post-graduate study, asking if there is a link between  this and the fall in post-graduate numbers at the universities of Otago and Canterbury. In parliament the deputy prime minister [...]

The University of Otago is not expecting to reach its budgeted number of students for the year according to a report in the Otago Daily Times Enrolments fell 2.3 percent from last year with postgraduate and international numbers hit particularly hard, with a fall of 8 percent. According to the ODT vice-chancellor Prof Harlene Hayne [...]

Tertiary Update Vol 15 No 36 The current round of fee rises that university councils are announcing is another sign the government’s cuts to education are unsustainable says TEU’s University of Auckland branch president Paul Taillon. The universities of Auckland, Lincoln and Waikato announced this week that it would increase fees by 4 percent next [...]

Figures supplied to the Otago Daily Times by the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) show New Zealand’s public tertiary institutions spent $31 million on advertising last year. The tertiary institution – including polytechnics and other providers – which spent the most overall was Unitec, which spent $4.8 million, followed by the Open Polytechnic, [...]

Over 500 people have shown their support for extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks by submitting to Parliament’s Government Administration Select Committee via TEU’s website. Women’s representatives at TEU branches are each promoting the website submission form to TEU members. Members at the universities of Waikato, Canterbury and Otago have been particularly supportive, making up about [...]

Tertiary education minister Steven Joyce took a swipe at the University of Otago for failing to import enough international students. The Otago Daily Times reported that Steven Joyce had asked the university to look “very closely” at what it was doing to attract international students. The university “definitely” could do more. His comments followed news that [...]

Some of the heaviest burden of persistent cost cutting is falling upon general staff, according to TEU national president Sandra Grey. Sandra Grey gave a speech for General Staff Day at Otago University yesterday where she challenged the myth that general staff were part of a problematic bloated public sector. “In an environment of persistent [...]

Tertiary Update Vol 15 No 23 It has been a slow start to collective bargaining at New Zealand’s universities this year with only Victoria, Massey and, as of this morning, Otago beginning negotiations. The union bargaining team at Otago will focus on solving the workload issues that members raised repeatedly in surveys and meeting over [...]

Otago University’s vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne has responded to comments in Tertiary Update last week that PBRF has had an adverse impact on the contribution academic staff are making in the area of community service. Harlene Hayne says Otago’s annual assessment of its academic staff involvement in community service shows “a striking stability over the past [...]

Submission of the Tertiary Education Union on Shaping Education Te Tāreinga Mātauranga Directions for Education Renewal in greater Christchurch May 2012 For further information please contact: Phil Dodds TEU Organiser Christchurch Office Ph: 03 3642768 027 4499422 phil.dodds@teu.ac.nz Introduction The Tertiary Education Union Te Hautū Kahurangi o Aotearoa (TEU) welcomes this opportunity to respond to the Shaping [...]