Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson is proposing extensivechanges to employment law, which include allowing employers to walk away from collective agreement negotiations. Cabinet approved the changes this week and they will likely go before Parliament this year.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says the changes will have a huge impact upon people working in tertiary education.

“Removing the employer’s duty to conclude bargaining is among the worst of the changes – it would mean that we would probably not now have collective agreements in place at the ex ITP-MECA branches – Wintec, NorthTec, Unitec, Whitireia, and Bay of Plenty Polytechnic. It may also have prevented us resolving the long-running dispute at Auckland University last year. Under these changes the employers would have simply been able to say that they had tried their best but could not reach agreement. The effect of that would be that all our members would be sitting on individual agreements with no ability to collectively negotiate a pay increase or changes to their conditions.”

The government also intends to remove a provision that guarantees all new employees will be employed on the terms and conditions of the collective agreement for the first 30 days of their employment.

Ms Riggs says this will mean that new workers (who may not know or be told that there is a collective agreement in place at their institution) could be offered any employment conditions at all.

“We know now that employees usually stay on the conditions to which they are first appointed. If those are no longer the union negotiated conditions then new employees could be appointed on conditions that undermine the union conditions. This will enable the employer by default to introduce new conditions into the workplace – for example they could slowly erode timetabled teaching hours.”

The minister, Ms Wilkinson says that the changes are modest and pragmatic, and will increase productivity, and help create higher paying jobs.

However, the Council of Trade Unions says the changes being considered are the worst attack on workers’ rights since the 1990s and will give employees few options. The CTU says the changes would have enabled Ports of Auckland employer to walk away from collective agreement negotiations and proceed with redundancy plans.

Ms Riggs agrees.

“These law changes threaten to de-unionise tertiary education employees, and drive down pay and employment conditions. They are bad for productivity and worse for any vision New Zealand has of being a high-wage economy.”

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Petition to keep university councils democratic
2. MIT nixes fundraising BBQ
3. Budget 2012 preview
4. Commission agrees with TEU’s PBRF advice

Other news

Tomorrow is Pink Shirt Day, an international campaign aimed to raise awareness about the power to prevent bullying. Pink Shirt Day aims to reduce bullying by celebrating diversity and promoting the development of positive social relationships.

Canterbury University students are plan to hand a petition against the proposed closure of three arts courses to vice-chancellor Rod Carr tomorrow and say they will not leave his office until he receives the document. You Are UC student group spokesperson Morgan Hodgson said that on Friday the group would hold a “petition crawl” at the university, ending up at Carr’s office - The Press

Australian National University management has backed away from its plans to ”spill” the positions of 32 of its tenured and permanent academic and administrative staff at the School of Music, bowing to union pressure to use formal redundancy provisions instead. The decision came as 1000 music-lovers crowded into ANU’s Union Court yesterday to protest against the proposed cuts in one of the biggest and loudest rallies in the university’s history -Canberra Times

Contrary to the Heraldeditorial, the biggest factor in the University of Auckland’s slip in world rankings is not student numbers. From 2006 to 2012, Auckland’s THE ranking fell from 46th to 82nd, yet student numbers increased only nine percent. At the same time, Government funding slowed to below the rate of inflation. Without proper investment, New Zealand academics will continue to move overseas for higher wages, research cannot be adequately carried out and students cannot receive the best tuition - Arena Williams and Sam Bookman

The University of Canterbury’s school of music is in crisis and needs to rapidly reverse a student decline to survive, a new report says. To fund a wages’ bill of $1.4 million, the school needed more than 180 fulltime-equivalent students. It had 85 this year. The university said yesterday there was no possibility the music school would close. “This city lives and breathes music and we know the school of music is a critical part of the music community,” pro-vice-chancellor Ed Adelson said -The Press

A part time student at the University of Canterbury says the university’s plan to close its theatre program will cost her $4000 of fees for a degree she can no longer complete. Sarah has told the student campaign You are UC:

“If I was a single teen or in my early 20s, I could move to Wellington, Auckland, or Otago to complete my Theatre degree. But this is not my situation. I am married, I have 3 children, I own a home in Christchurch, moving to suit the degree I want to achieve is not in the realm of possibility for me. The only reason I started a degree at Canterbury was so I could become a High School Drama teacher. If this closure goes ahead, I will have spent $4000 towards a degree which I will be unable… to complete at Canterbury University.”

Meanwhile the Christchurch Press reports that corporate culture at the university may be choking creativity. Reporting on the change proposal to close theatre and film studies The Press notes:

“[T]he issue at the moment, the document goes on to say, is not that Arts courses are weak or unsustainable, but that the College of Arts offers more courses than it can support on current and projected income.”

“In short: there is nothing wrong with the affected courses but someone or something has to go. It also becomes clear that this thinking actually pre-dates the earthquakes, as the proposal says [Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the College of Arts, Prof] Adelson has been engaged in his strategic process for 18 months.”

The Press reports that that TEU has filed papers with the Employment Authority seeking a compliance order. Essentially, the filed papers charge the university with not following its own rules around academic process.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Will there be jobs for science graduates?
2. Joyce wants less representation on university councils
3. Massive student protests shake Quebec
4. Massachusetts replaces teacher educators with video highlights

Other news

Instead of rethinking whether performance measures work in the tertiary sector, the government has set up a performance exercise looking at student retention and completion. For tertiary institutions the quickest route to achieving in this exercise is making sure students pass their courses. The simplest way to ensure students pass is to put pressure on academics to elevate grades (and in a few isolated cases this is already beginning to happen in a range of institutions across New Zealand) – Dr Sandra Grey on Kiwiblog

What we’re saying, though, is that once you’ve used your 200 weeks [of student allowance], that’s the end of it. Currently, you can get exemptions for long programmes, as they call them, or for master’s or PhDs. But when somebody’s getting to the point when they’re doing a master’s or a PhD or a long programmes where they’ve perhaps done one degree and they’re going to do another degree, they are going to have a good income when they leave, and therefore they should be able to pay off a student loan - Steven Joyce on TVNZ Q&A

Universities NZ welcomes the Minister of Tertiary Education, Skills & Employment’s indication over the weekend that there will be a modest increase to the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) in this year’s Budget as it is an effective system for supporting the wide-ranging contributions made by university research - Universities NZ

39 percent of fraud in both tertiary and local government sectors went un-investigated by police. Some 38 percent of respondents in councils and 37 percent in polytechnics and universities said they were aware of a case of fraud in their institution within the past two years – compared to a public sector average of less than a quarter - Radio NZ

Saudi Arabian students have been banned from studying in Christchurch because of earthquake fears. Students sponsored by the Saudi Ministry of Higher Education cannot get government-funded scholarships in Christchurch this year -Stuff

Confronted with the biggest crisis since the 30s, the trade body for British sociologists proudly displayed its engagement by enumerating articles in the Journal of Niche Studies. All this is a long way from that letter of 1981, let alone Keynes. Perhaps it shows how far academics have been forced to conform to their research assessment exercises and turn out measurable output - The Guardian

TV3′s new Sunday morning offering, Three60, is sponsored by Massey University in a deal some sources say could be worth around $50,000. Professor Malcolm Wright, Massey University’s head of journalism, appeared onThree60 to discuss the Rupert Murdoch saga. The sponsor became the commentator. In doing so, the tertiary institution got more buck for their endorsement dollar than if they had flashed a logo on screen at the commencement of the show – which they did. Is this part of the deal? - The New Zealand Herald

The UMass students say that their professors and the classroom teachers who observe them for six months in real school settings can do a better job judging their skills than a corporation that has never seen them.

They have refused to send Pearson two 10-minute videos of themselves teaching, as well as a 40-page take-home test, requirements of an assessment that will soon be necessary to be teachers in several states.

Lily Waites, 25, who is getting a master’s degree to teach biology, found that the process of reducing 270 minutes of recorded classroom teaching to 20 minutes of video was demeaning and frustrating, made worse because she had never edited video before. “I don’t think it showed in any way who I am as a teacher,” she said. “It felt so stilted.”

The Teacher Performance Assessment that Pearson and Stanford are developing is still in the pilot stage, being tested by 200 universities in more than two dozen states. Student teachers who do not pass would not be licensed.

Stanford officials say that, to the best of their knowledge, the UMass program is the only case of resistance.

The Chair of TEU’s teacher education committee, Brian Marsh, say the pilot is dystopian:

“Surely this is exclusively about economic rationalism – no more visiting lecturers, no travel costs, all done remotely at $75 a pop. If we are to embrace the notion of professional development and life-long, or career-long, learning, what kind of signal does it send that a summative (and possibly summary) judgment can be made about a teacher’s practice at a distance, based on a video clip?”

RAINS Final_2012-03-01.pdf Download this file

This report is an interesting discussion about academic freedom and about autonomy of institutions and researchers

Posted via email from TEU

When the government imposed business-style reform on polytechnic councils two years ago, experienced, democratically-chosen, community people were sacked from the boards and replaced with expensive ministerially-appointed bureaucrats. Unsurprisingly, costs went up and accountability to communities diminished.

Dr Grey says the changes to polytechnic councils were not only undemocratic, they were costly.

At Wintec, for instance, fourteen people sat on Wintec’s council before the reforms and collected $93,000 in council fees. Then in 2010, the eight councillors, appointed by either the Minister of Tertiary Education or the council took pay rises of between 17 and 131 percent, and collected just under $109,000, despite being half the size and less representative. At Unitec the 15 councillors in 2009 received a total of $99,000 (an average of $6,600 each). The eight councillors in 2010 appointed by either the minister or the council itself, took $116,000 (an average of $14,500 each).

NorthTec’s 2010 annual report shows that it spent over $500,000 more on consultants and legal fees than it did in 2009 – up 195 percent from $286,000 to $844,000. Meanwhile the 2010 Whitireia annual report shows an increase in consultants and legal fees of $52,000, up 18 percent on 2009.

“Why would the government want to replace diverse, democratically elected people who have a range of skills and a passion for their local university, with a more expensive, less diverse team of ministerially-appointed bureaucrats?” said Dr Grey.

For more information:

Dr Sandra Grey, TEU national president, 021 844 176 or 04 801 5098
Stephen Day, TEU communications officer, 021 2900 734 or 04 801 4792
http://www.teu.ac.nz

The prime minister, John Key, and the minister of tertiary education skills and employment, Steven Joyce, this week foreshadowed several tertiary education budget initiatives.

Mr Joyce told Radio New Zealand that he would be shifting funding away from humanities and commerce towards maths, science, engineering and technology.

“We pay a higher subsidy for humanities and commerce than the Australians do, we pay a lower subsidy for science and engineering.”

“That tends to mean that universities are a bit more biased towards those other subjects because we end up paying, probably, a little bit more than they need to encourage those subjects and not enough for the science, technology and engineering subjects,” Mr Joyce said.

His statements follow a Tertiary Education Commission edict to tertiary institutions to increase enrolments next year in science, technology, engineering and maths and, if necessary, to cut other courses to do that.

Meanwhile Mr Key told business leaders it would be another zero budget, and, to help achieve that, people with student loans, who currently pay back 10 cents for each dollar they earn, will have to pay them back faster.  Then Mr Joyce said that the government would cut allowance costs by ensuring allowances are targeted at those in the early years of study and to those that can least afford it.

NZUSA president Pete Hodkinson said that any cuts to allowances would reduce access, denying New Zealanders an opportunity to improve their lives, and would lead to greater debt.

Quarterly Employment Survey data released by Statistics NZ today shows that that the number of full time equivalent jobs in education and training fell by 3.6 percent over the last year.

The data does not show in what sector of education and training these jobs disappeared, but within the tertiary sector, there have been on-going restructuring and redundancies as a response to government budget cuts.

“Government funding cuts do not prioritise resource, they simply remove resources. In this case, the resources are people and the effect is fewer people to teach students who want to learn”, said Dr Grey.

For more information:

Dr Sandra Grey, TEU national president, 021 844 176 or 04 801 5098
Stephen Day, TEU communications officer, 021 2900 734 or 04 801 4792
http://www.teu.ac.nz

You Are UC, the student campaign against cuts to the College of Arts at the University of Canterbury, is holding a barbeque complete with theatrical entertainment to protest against the cuts today. You Are UC will also becollecting signatures for a petition against the cuts. The protest starts at midday on the arts lawn outside A Block on the University’s Ilam campus.

The petition calls for an immediate halt to the College of Arts Change Proposal to cut three programmes saying the business case contains flaws and students have not had the time or information needed to take part in consultation.

You Are UC opposes the cuts recently announced to the College of Arts. Morgan Hodgson, a spokesperson for the group, said that You Are UC is concerned about the integrity of the process the University is following, and what it will mean for future potential cuts; including those in other departments.

“In dealing with a short-term funding crisis, there is long-term damage being done to the educational opportunities in Christchurch.”

“Theatre and Film Studies, for example, usually makes a profit for the university. Cutting it is bad for the balance sheet and bad for education. One of the American studies lecturers losing his job receives a Marsden Fund grant, which brings the university hundreds of thousands of dollars – money the change proposal does not account for.

“We want the university to revisit its case for change, and start a new consultation with robust figures,” said Hodgson.

Also in Tertiary Update this week

1. Student fees rise faster than inflation
2. Joyce entices Saudi students with ultrafast broadband
3. Teacher education scheme delivers too late
4. 1 in 6 students in financial distress

Other news

All five colleges at the University of Canterbury are said to be making hard choices and many more cuts are on their way. In the School of Commerce, the Management Science and Operations Management major has been under review since the beginning of March, and students and staff were given just over two weeks for input on this proposal. Only last year, students were informed suddenly that the Masters of Social Work degree was being cancelled indefinitely. Students that wanted to continue studying in this programme were notified that they would either have to return to undergraduate study or try to cross-credit their points. Other courses are being ‘taught out’ in the College of Education and rumour mill is running as to what could happen within the Colleges of Engineering and Science -Canta

Act leader John Banks has made an attack on “middle-class welfare”, urging National to bite the bullet and restore interest rates to student loans - New Zealand Herald

It is important for universities to engage with businesses if they are to produce relevant research, says Massey University’s newly appointed Professor in Innovation and Economics - Massey University

Charter schools supremo Catherine Isaac has signalled her education pilot could be run by for-profit organisations. The former Act Party president told the party’s annual conference yesterday that “for profit” organisations are not allowed to run schools in the UK. “That is being seen as a mistake and as something they want to change,” Ms Isaac said -Stuff

The University of Otago has denied “gaming” the system in order to appear higher on league tables which rank their quality of research performance and says it has “nothing to hide” over the way it takes part in the process - Otago Daily Times

Liam Burns, the president of the British National Union of Students, is calling for university lecturers to be forced to acquire teaching qualifications to ensure that students paying tuition fees are getting the most out of their degrees -The Guardian

The cost of a United States university degree has left people wide-eyed for decades but student debt has now mushroomed into a nightmare for Americans with potential to explode as the next major US financial crisis - The Australian

Exasperated by rising subscription costs charged by academic publishers, Harvard University has encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls -The Guardian

“Astonishingly Mr Joyce then said the solution to this problem was using broadband to beam overseas lecturers into New Zealand lecture theatres.”

“He is effectively telling Saudi students to fly 17 hours to New Zealand to sit in a lecture theatre and watch an academic on television – an academic who might well be Saudi.”

“Mr Joyce has a reputation for being the man who sells the government’s vision and agenda to voters. However, in this speech he seems to have lost track of what people want from tertiary education.”

“He cannot paper over staff shortages and funding cuts with ultra-fast broadband and remote learning. International and domestic students pay large amounts of money expecting face-to-face contact and human interaction with their lecturers and tutors. If New Zealand wants to remain an attractive place to study for international, and domestic students, it needs to invest in training and recruiting new academics to cover the impending skills shortage,” said Dr Grey.

For more information:

Dr Sandra Grey, TEU national president, 021 844 176 or 04 801 5098
Stephen Day, TEU communications officer, 021 2900 734 or 04 801 4792
http://teu.ac.nz