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

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

“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

“Universities have tried to change their research rankings compared to other universities by ‘hiding’ staff they consider will compare poorly in terms of research output,” said TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey. “Universities have changed people’s employment agreements, restructured departments and people’s jobs and in some cases made academics redundant simply so that they can appear higher on a rankings ladder than other universities.”

Today the commission released the initial audit of the performance based research fund exercise carried out by KPMG. The audit shows a range of issues with the way institutions are engaging the exercise, confirming that gaming has been occurring in the research funding exercise.

“The Commission is now consulting on ways to end the gaming of the system, though this attention to the process has come too late for staff that have lost their jobs in institutions wanting to manipulate their quality ranking.”

“TEU has consistently and publicly lobbied the commission about this issue for a long time and we are glad to see that our concerns have been recognised,” said Dr Grey. “I hope that this review and consultation on performance based research funding will mean that good teachers and emerging researchers at universities can have more job security.”

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

28 March 2012

Dear Mr Joyce,

We write to you to deplore the proposed closure of entire programmes and majors at the University of Canterbury.  We warned you last year that, without your intervention and support, many staff at the university would lose their jobs, and students would lose the opportunity to study the courses that inspire them.

That travesty, of course closures and job losses, is now imminent. However, we believe it is not too late to act to save these programmes and the opportunities for students in these majors. Canterbury needs, now more than ever, a broad and diverse tertiary education that provides opportunities for all its potential students.

You have refused to meet with us since we warned you of this. But the time has come now to listen. We, as representatives of tertiary education staff from across the country, call upon you to intervene and provide the financial security the University of Canterbury needs to get back on its feet.

We are ready to work with you to make sure that people throughout the Canterbury region have the opportunity to learn.

Yours sincerely,
Sandra Grey,
TEU national president

And the branch presidents and executive officers of the TEU nationally:

Victoria University’s Dr Martin Lally has claimed that the university has varied or sought to vary the employment agreements of a number of staff who are not active researchers, to ensure their temporary absence from the university at the June 2012 PBRF census date, thereby improving the university’s PBRF result.

These allegations fit with similar stories TEU has heard from staff working at universities in New Zealand, according to Dr Sandra Grey. We have raised these concerns with the commission over the past few years:

“We know of:

• staff being persuaded to resign on the understanding they will be rehired after the PBRF round is completed;
• staff put on fixed term agreements to avoid them counting for PBRF measurements;
• staff being offered shorter fixed term agreements to avoid counting in PBRF measurements; and
• potential staff not being employed to avoid them counting towards PBRF scores.”

“These cases represent an outrageous breach of people’s employment rights, but also make a farce of the PBRF as a funding mechanism,” said Dr Grey.

“We believe that the Tertiary Education Commission should establish a wider independent investigation to ensure no universities are rorting public funding in this way.”

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 Herald reported yesterday that Victoria University was one of only five organisations so far to express an interest in running a private charter school.

Dr Grey says Victoria’s expression of interest to run a charter school raises worrying questions about what direction the university has for education.

“If it has innovative new ideas for education, why is it not already teaching and promoting those ideas in our existing public schools through research and teacher education at its own Faculty of Education.”

“New Zealand has a high quality public education system, from early childhood right through to adult and tertiary education. One of its strengths is that everyone, no matter where they come from, has the same opportunity to high quality teaching and learning. In contrast, charter schools, like many other private education providers, are limited and divisive. They take the focus away from improving education for all New Zealanders to focus instead on rewarding private, for-profit companies. Victoria should not involve itself in legitimising this attack on quality public education,” 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

Dr Grey’s comments follow news that the minister wants to publish the average income of graduates from specific courses as part of a push to get more out of the tertiary sector.

“This is not helpful data for graduates, and it is a ridiculous criterion against which to measure courses and tertiary institutions.”

“We know already that people studying medicine earn more, on average, than people studying humanities or trades. Everybody knows that occupations with large numbers of female graduates earn less on average than occupations with large numbers of male graduates. And we know the biggest determinant of someone’s income is how much his or her parents earned. We have no need for data to be published on this.”

“If the minister really wants to collect this data and make good use of it, he should be sending it on to the Department of Labour and employers, pressuring them to do something about those areas where the wages and salaries of qualified and skilled New Zealanders are too low,” 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

“We congratulate Dr West and are looking forward to working well with him.”

“We also farewell Dr Roger Field, who is a well-respected and highly regarded leader, and lifelong academic.”

“Leaders do make a difference to universities, and we believe the best leaders are ones who are committed to, and currently engaged in academia, both teaching and research.”

“What the whole of Canterbury needs now is academic leaders committed to, and involved in education, rather than managers committed to ministerial diktats about economic budget cuts.”

“Lincoln also needs a local advocate to defend a unique university, and we trust that Dr West, with his close links to both the area and the university has the skills to fulfil that role,” 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

Ms Riggs’ comments follow news that Steven Joyce, the minister of science, tertiary education and economic development agencies is considering restructuring all three agencies at the same time.

“Tertiary education is closely related to science as an economic development, but it is also closely related to health – people with tertiary education have better health outcomes on average. Access to tertiary education helps reduce crime. So, why not consider a merger between tertiary education, the department of health and police instead? Tertiary education links closely to agriculture, archives, the arts council, and the list goes on.”

“There are many important economic and scientific benefits from a broad, accessible, high quality tertiary education system. But those are not the only benefits. The minister needs to make sure that his focus on economic development and science does  not crowd out space for all the other important social and community benefits that high quality public tertiary education should provide,” said Ms Riggs.

For more information:

Sharn Riggs, TEU national secretary, 027 443 8768 or 04 801 5098
Stephen Day, TEU communications officer, 021 2900 734 or 04 801 4792
http://www.teu.ac.nz