We have profiled some of our members to display the diversity, excellence and support to all of us who are part of the university community.

PROFILES OF GENERAL STAFF MEMBERS AT WAIKATO

Annie Barker has worked at the University of Waikato as a Technician in the Chemistry department for approximately 18 years. She has been actively involved with union activities since first joining NZ Technicians Union as Secretary of our local branch, then involved with AUS after the amalgamation of the librarians and technicians with other staff on campus.  Since the amalgamation with AUS, Annie has served AUS members in various capacities as Branch President, Technicians Rep, Bargaining committee member, Ordinary committee member, Member Representative, and Contact person for her department and school. She is currently a University Sector Rep. on the National General Staff Sector Group in TEU. Annie is committed to improving the working lives of all staff on campus but in particular to improving and enhancing the conditions of general staff.  Work load and career opportunity/progression are two issues which she would like TEU to focus on this year, but there are of course many other issues that can be worked on together and Annie would like to stress the importance of your contribution to achieving improvement for yourself and others. General Staff really are the Heart of the University.

Pip Bruce Ferguson has worked at the University of Waikato as a Teaching Developer in the Teaching Development Unit for approximately three years.  Pip joined the university after many years of work at Wintec, AUT and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa as well as independent research consultancy. She originally worked as a primary teacher and has been an active member of NZEI, ASTE and now TEU across her working life.

Rod Arnold is the Residential Manager for College Hall and has been a member of both AUS and TEU.  Prior to this he worked in the polytechnic sector for 13 years as a general staff member in the student recruitment/ career counselling area and was on the National Executive of the polytechnic general staff union TIASA for six years, spending 18 months as their union organiser/advocate in Wellington prior to returning with his family to his homeland in the Waikato/BOP regions.  He had a rest from Branch committee involvement while he got to grips with the demands and workload of pastoral care to 327 students, plus the challenge of completing a law degree part-time.  Currently Rod is a Branch Committee Member and has been a union member since commencing public service in 1985.

 University of Waikato EXCELLENCE Award Winners

As the theme of this newsletter is recognition of our general/allied staff members and the contributions they make to the life of the university, we thought it appropriate to again recognise those who won an Excellence Award in the 2010 round. Below are the details of those winners who were presented with their awards by the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Roy Crawford at an Awards ceremony in December 2010:

Administrative Excellence Awards (carries a monetary prize, four winners in this category)

An Administrative Excellence Award was received by Allison Henry, from the Library. Allison was previously the Team Leader of the Shelving Unit within the Library, but was seconded to the role of Project Co-ordinator to oversee the logistics and liaison associated with the physical changes needed to refurbish the Library building as it evolved into the new Student Centre. She was nominated for this award by the Head of Facilities Management because her efforts made the role of FMD in such a complex project considerably easier through her cheerfulness, high degree of organisational skill, honesty and professionalism. Her efforts have resulted in reduced time allowed for the decanting of various services within the Library and greatly aided the construction programme.

Trudy Harris, who is the Teaching Developer (Evaluation and Quality) within the Teaching Development Unit, was also a recipient of the Administrative Excellence Award in 2010. Trudy’s personal and professional initiative and contribution in relation to teaching quality have been extensive. Her work has contributed to the improvement of teaching evaluation and quality for individuals, Faculties, and the university as a whole. She has worked tirelessly to develop a system of paper and teaching appraisals which are both credible for the institution and palatable to staff, and her professionalism, her institutional vision and her research capability have all contributed to a highly valued and useful system.

Health and Safety Award (recognises significant contributions to health and safety across the university and the recipient receives $5,000 and a trophy created by Donn Ratana)

This award was made to Jane Goodbehere for the huge expansion in her role as Health and Safety Representative for the Library during the refurbishment She carries this role  in addition to her normal role as a Library Assistant in the New Zealand Collection. She has had to be constantly vigilant about existing hazards and had to identify new hazards which have emerged on an almost daily basis as a result of Library staff working within a constantly changing building site. Her attention to detail has ensured that there have been no accidents associated with the building project and that potential hazards have been dealt with quickly and effectively.

Owen and Mandy from the Union Plus team joined us this year at our General Staff Day function at the Hamilton campus, and provided a gift basket for a prize draw for all enquiries received on the day.  It was great to have them there, and we will have them back on campus for a seminar (or two) this year.

Firstly, congratulations to Takashi Aota, the gift basket winner – well done to you, enjoy!

Thank you for having us along to support the fantastic initiatives that the TEU has underway {General Staff Day].

As your financial services partners we strive to give Union Members honest, class leading advice and their specialists will be making contact with those interested members over the next week.

Warm regards,

Owen Grauman
Financial Services Manager, Group Plus

OTHER NEWS …

Pay Increases

Just a reminder to everyone, that although we are not bargaining the CEAs’ this year there is a negotiated pay increase of 2% which took effect from 1 August 2011.  You should have noticed the change in your pays over the last few weeks depending on which pay cycle you are in.

Branch Annual General Meeting

The branch AGM will be held on Wednesday, 21^st September 2011 in S.G.03 at 1pm.  If you are interested in being involved as a local branch activist/committee member please see the separate AGM newsletter for more details.

University Reviews Update

FASS – virtually completed or so we thought!  Through their resolution, action and solidarity the faculty members have managed to withstand proposals to significantly cut academic numbers.  Following various iterations of the change proposal the union action has saved a number of jobs, and significantly only one 0.5 FTE academic position was forcibly made redundant (the union has challenged this and is currently awaiting mediation).

A new review proposal was advised to affected staff in the Languages late last week.  Consultation with that group of staff will now start, and the union is meeting with, and working with members to prepare submissions to respond to the proposal.

WMS – It was proposed that 9 Senior Tutor/Tutor positions were to be disestablished within the School.  The review has now been completed, and, although the positions themselves were all disestablished, no one was made redundant as all the affected members were redeployed into other academic and general staff positions.

Unfortunately though, as many of you will be aware, one of our members passed away during the review process.  James McIntosh was a valued and respected member of the WMS Marketing department who has had significant involvement in their 499 supervision of students over the years.  He is sadly missed by his colleagues and students alike.

Obituaries

As many of you may be aware Rangiiria Hedley passed away earlier in the year. Sadly more recently, Natana Takurua has also passed away.  Both were staff members in the School of Māori and Pacific Development. They will always remain treasured friends and colleagues of both staff and students in the School.

Rangiiria (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) started at the university in 2003, and her primary teaching area was that of taonga puoro, traditional Māori instruments.

Natana (Ngati Porou, Tokomaru Bay) started at the university, first as a student in the inaugural Te Tohu Paetahi class (1991) and then later as an academic staff member in Reo, Natana taught primarily in the Te Tohu Paetahi programme.  Natana opted to take voluntary redundancy late last year in the review of SMPD which saw three academic positions disestablished.

They are both sorely missed by their colleagues, students and the wider community for their contributions over the years.

 Leave Issues

As noted in the previous newsletter, we have done some work with members, payroll and HR around some issues that have come up for members with understanding annual leave calculations.  For most staff members, their leave balances and entitlements should be relatively simple to understand, but for those who don’t work a ‘standard’ 37.5 (or 40 in some areas of FMD) hour week the calculations around your leave entitlements may be different.  This fact has created some confusion over understanding how much leave members may have, as well as how that leave was calculated.  If anyone has any questions about how much or how leave is calculated, please call payroll, as the staff are happy to help explain it to you.  Alternatively you can call the union office and we can assist also.

Community News

Due to the Christchurch earthquake the proposed day of action regarding the Fairness at Work issues [around the employment legislation changes] which was to be held on the 1^st of April was postponed, and we will notify you when it is rescheduled.

Similarly this year’s census has been also cancelled – the Statistics Dept.’s main processing centre was in Christchurch and it was wisely decided that it would not be helpful to attempt to ask Christchurch residents to complete a census when faced with such devastation and loss, and the obvious challenges that the Statistics Department staff would face due to the practicalities of running the census.  It is still unclear when the national census will be held.

SPEAK UP FOR EDUCATION – Public Meeting – Thursday, 1^st September

A joint meeting organised by the education unions – TEU, NZEI and PPTA – to discuss investment in education in NZ, and our aim that every student reaches their full potential.  Come along and listen to MP’s and party candidates and have your say about how to make NZ’s great education system the best in the world!

The evening starts at 7.30pm with Lindsay Cumberpatch as the MC.  Each sector in education (Early Childhood, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary) will have a representative present to speak to the key issues for that sector.  Tom Ryan (Immediate Past President of TEU) is the Tertiary rep.  To date, the Greens, Labour, Māori, National and NZ First parties have agreed to send representatives/MP’s along to participate.

This is an opportunity for us in the education sector to freely discuss the issues with other interested parties and to make clear our views to MP’s both current and future about what we think are the important issues for education.

If you want more details please contact the union office.

Auckland University Academic CEA UPDATE

Auckland academics have still not been able to settle their CEA and negotiations are still fraught for them.  There are two key sticking points:

• University management want to remove core terms and conditions around research and study leave, promotion processes and outside activities from the CEA and place them into policy;
• The use of Professional Teaching Fellows (PTF’s) by the university in place of permanent staff, typically Tutors/Senior Tutors remains problematic.

Academic members have been offered a 4% pay offer by the university but they are prepared to forego this as they feel so strongly about the conditions they wish to keep in their CEA. They are committed to quality education and research for the benefit of students and the university and they believe these are significantly at risk if they accept the university’s offer in its current form.

They created a webpage www.saveourconditions.org where you can go for the latest news and post messages of support, or make a comment.

26 August – We can report a major breakthrough in the roller-coaster ride of this dispute over the Auckland University Academic Collective.

As a result of urgent negotiations between the TEU and the Employer (the Vice-Chancellor) to avert the boycott of Courses and Careers Day and to resolve the current impasse, the following agreement was reached:

• The V-C agrees not to oppose proceeding to facilitated negotiation and if the Employment Relations Authority does direct the parties to so proceed, both parties will cooperate to secure a prompt fixture.
• The TEU has agreed not in engage in any boycotts of university events (e.g. Course & Careers days, graduation), non-compliance of PBRF requirements, or other forms of industrial action until the process of facilitated negotiation is completed.

The Negotiation team at Auckland believes that the VC has made significant concessions with the agreement over the facilitation, and that it is a major step towards resolution of the dispute.

Who can join TEU?

From time to time the organisers and senior representatives hear the rumour that heads of departments/schools and other staff who perform line management roles cannot join the union.

This is incorrect. The only staff member of the university who cannot join the TEU is the Vice-Chancellor (the employer).  Senior managers, middle managers, staff on individual employment agreements, staff on fixed-term agreements, casual staff, part-time staff, academic year-only staff, post-docs, postgrads and undergraduates who work at the university can all join.

So if you know of any colleagues who would like to join but think they are ineligible, then you can advise them of the truth: that they can sign up at http://teu.ac.nz/join or with a printed membership form which can be sent to them via the internal mail (email teu@waikato.ac.nz to request a form). There are significant discounts for low-income members and your colleagues can use http://teu.ac.nz/join/subscriptions to calculate what their fees might be.

Something a little bit lighter to brighten your day - Consultation as some see it …

NATIONAL TEU NEWS:

Nominations are being called for TEU Life membership and Meritorious Service Awards: under rule 7.2 of the Union Rules, branches (amongst other TEU groups) may nominate suitable persons for life membership or meritorious service awards.  If you believe you know someone who may be an appropriate nominee for either of these awards can you please contact either Prof. Dov Bing (dovbing@waikato.ac.nz ) or the union office (teu@waikato.ac.nz ) with your nomination by the 19^th September.  All nominations must be accompanied by a statement outlining the reasons for making the nomination, and a history of the nominee’s contributions.

1. National Office Holders and Sector Group Nominations are now open also.  Up for election this year are the following positions:-
   1. Waikato rep to the University Sector Group (currently Prof. Nan Seuffert);
   2. University Rep to the General Staff Committee (currently one of the three university sector reps is Annie Barker, Chemistry);
   3. University General Staff Rep to the Womens’ Committee (currently one of the three university sector general staff reps is Pip Bruce-Ferguson, TDU);
   4. Womens’ Vice President (currently Alex Sims, Auckland);
   5. University General Staff Vice President (currently Helen Kissell, Canterbury).

Tertiary Update Vol 13 No 47

The government is currently negotiating, in secret with eight other countries, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). This proposed agreement will dramatically increase the ability of private foreign firms, including tertiary education providers, to sue future New Zealand governments and New Zealand public tertiary institutions.

TEU national president Dr Tom Ryan says that for-profit universities in the United States are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attempts to increase their share of both the domestic USUS market and overseas markets.

Recently, for-profit Keiser University lodged a lawsuit against the community college Florida State College, alleging that negative public comments by staff at the college devalued Keiser’s share price and reduced its enrolments. Keiser subsequently withdrew its lawsuit after the two institutions “agreed to put their differences behind them.” Florida State College also told the media it “never intended to disparage Keiser University or its principals or to cause harm to the institution.”

“If we are not careful, foreign investment rules in the TPPA could give for-profit institutions s from the United States, or other countries, the right to sue New Zealand tertiary institutions for making it hard for them to do business here,” said Dr Ryan.

“The agreement might include rules governing the monitoring of academic quality, institutions, qualifications their staff should hold, or the content of the courses they offer. Once TPPA investment rules are set they cannot be reversed, and as Keiser University showed, for-profit institutions will use rules like these aggressively.”

NZQA has already said it is providing support as required for the TPPA negotiations as the agreement may include qualifications recognition clauses.

Inside Higher Ed notes that American for-profit universities are increasingly active outside the United States and offer many on-line degrees internationally. They are also buying or starting universities in other countries, linking with overseas institutions. For example, the University of Liverpool in the UK is the partner of Laureate Education, a large US for-profit, and works with Laureate on many on-line degrees). The US for-profits also offer many on-line degrees internationally.

For more on for-profit universities, check out Stephen Colbert’s analysis of the sector in the USA.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Otago Uni sacks people who deliver government tertiary strategy
2. Weltec staff opposed to 55 more hours a year
3. NZQA takes over quality assurance of polytechnics
4. Retirement commission wants to raise retirement age

Other news

EIT chief executive Chris Collins said that, other than the positions of Tairāwhiti chief executive Judy Campbell and five members of her senior management team, there would be no more redundancies in the short term as a result of the EIT-Tairāwhiti merger. Mr Collins says he will hire extra academic staff to teach new programmes in Gisborne – Dominion Post

TEC Chief Executive Roy Sharp has announced his retirement, as of 3 April next year, the day he turns 65 – Education Directions

TEU members and staff in the library and IT at Victoria University have this week invited to complete a pay and employment equity survey. The survey is a critical element of the limited pay and employment equity (PaEE) review that the university is undertaking to determine whether women’s employment opportunities and rewards in those two areas of the university are affected by gender. The review is part of ongoing PaEE work in the sector, continuing despite the government’s closure of the PaEE unit in the Department of Labour.

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TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz

The company, which offers English language and general tuition to international and domestic students, cut 3.6 positions in August. Now it is reviewing management and support positions.

The Otago Daily Times has been told at least three further positions will go, but the company’s board chairperson, Ian Simpson, said he could not confirm that. The review would be completed before the end of the year, he said.

TEU national president Dr Tom Ryan said these cuts undermine one of goals of the government’s Tertiary Education Strategy, in that the TES aims to get more young people, Māori, and Pasifika people into tertiary education.

“It really is a catch-22 situation. Foundations studies course like this are integral to the success of government’s own tertiary strategy, and yet staff are being made redundant because of the government’s cap on student numbers.”

Foundation Studies at Otago University has had its domestic student places cut by 44 percent next year. Because most of the courses at Foundation Studies are less than a full year, and it takes several students to make up one student place, the reduction will affect hundreds of students.

Many of the subsidised places have been filled by students who had not performed well enough at school to obtain university entrance and have previously needed a one-semester intensive boost to make the grade. Asked what would happen to those students, Mr Simpson said they would “have to make sure they passed UE at school” or wait until they were 20 and apply for a university place as an adult student.

Dr Ryan said that government decisions were undermining the government’s own strategic goals.

“The students that the government says it most wants tertiary institutions to take in are also the ones that it attaches the least funding value to. The situation simply doesn’t make sense.”

Thanks to _setev at Flickr for the photo

TEU members at Napier’s Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) are voting on whether to accept a new collective agreement that the union says will help protect academics from losing work to staff on a lower pay scale.

EIT has a new academic position, called a learning facilitator, whose role has been relatively undefined until this point, but essentially involves supporting other academic staff to ‘maximise students’ learning experience.’

TEU’s local bargaining team has negotiated a definition of the tasks that a learning facilitator can, and importantly, cannot do.  A learning facilitator will not for instance be able to take responsibility for programme design, lesson preparation or assessment (except when it is a checklist).

TEU deputy secretary Nanette Cormack says that the intention is that the new definitions will not only protect other staff from losing work or responsibility to the less well-paid learning facilitators, but will also help provide the beginnings of a career path for some learning facilitators to move into other academic positions.

“Currently there is some overlap between the top of the pay scale for learning facilitators and the first five steps on the pay scale for other academic staff.  When EIT merges with Tairāwhiti Polytechnic it is likely that a number of courses will be led by academics on one campus but delivered to smaller groups by learning facilitators on the other campus. It’s important if people are doing the full job of an academic, including programme design and lesson preparation, that they get paid the full salary.”

As well as the new job definitions the proposed new agreement includes two pay increases of 1.9 percent over two years and a one off payment of $700, which members should receive just before Christmas.  It also establishes a $2000 fund to help the two TEU branches at EIT and Tairāwhiti to meet and work through their own union merger issues.  Voting to ratify the agreement closes tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the government yesterday officially approved the merger between EIT and Tairāwhiti.  The two polytechnics will merge on 1 January next year. The Government has given $7.5 million to help with the transition to clear a backlog of maintenance work at Tairāwhiti and to pay for costs to rearrange courses. EIT told Radio New Zealand all employees of both polytechnics retain their positions for now, but back office jobs will be looked at in the new year.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Ministry’s answer for young Māori and Pacific students is more reviews
2. Cutting budgets won’t necessarily save money
3. TEU mourns Pike River tragedy
4. Majority don’t want govt telling students what to do
5. Communities call for caution in trade negotiations

Other news

TEU national president Dr Tom Ryan said what was is happening in Wellington – as Victoria University plans to close its gender studies course, Massey University considers closing the Wellington campus engineering school and a potential merger of Weltec and Whitireia – reflected a national trend. “Gender studies is an example of the pressure that’s being put on the liberal arts areas seen as less deserving of support than science and technology.” Dr Ryan says there have been more than 50 major restructurings this year, after the Government put pressure on the tertiary education sector to make cutbacks. Liberal arts are suffering, as well as language courses and Māori programmes, he says. –Dominion Post.

Massey University vice-chancellor Steve Maharey said restrictions on student places and huge growth led to the sudden closure of summer school enrolments in July. The university revealed on Tuesday that about 20 papers were pulled and enrolments almost halved after the university was forced to close the door on summer school. Of the students who missed out, 1347 lodged an appeal for a place at Massey University. More than half, 715 students, were accepted –Manawatu Standard

The Nelson teaching campus of the University of Canterbury will remain open after pressure from the community got through to decision-makers. Pro-vice-chancellor for the College of Education, Professor Gail Gillon, has confirmed that the 12-year-old Hardy St campus will remain open despite having been earmarked for closure. If the campus had closed, all training teachers who live in Nelson would have to have studied thorough correspondence – The Nelson Mail

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TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz

Thanks to Joyce Seitzinger @ Flickr for the photo

The report notes that since the introduction of the 2010-2015 Tertiary Education Strategy, there have been a number of policy changes made to support the tertiary education system to achieve the priorities.  For many current students though, these policy changes are actually reviews, including a review of special admissions to universities to allow universities to set entry priorities an operational policy for industry training, a targeted review of qualifications by NZQA aimed at improving the overall design of the vocational qualification system, and a review of the government’s investments in te reo Māori.

TEU national president Dr Tom Ryan said that on the whole the union supports the Strategy and its focus on helping those who would not otherwise get a tertiary education into study.

“Reviews are important,” said Dr Ryan “But in many instances we already know what we need to do to increase participation in tertiary education among Māori and Pasifika. While the government continues to cut funding, remove foundation studies  pathways,  and fuel an environment of restructuring it fails to do anything that will seriously address its own strategy’s goals.”

The TTPA has been called a “free trade agreement” by its proponents but in reality, the main function of the agreement would be to establish an array of new investor rights and privileges that could undermine vast swathes of important non-trade laws, policies and practices in the nine countries currently involved. These constraints would bind our governments into the indefinite future.

The USA is effectively setting the terms for the current negotiations, based on a standard template that replicates the U.S. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) model.

That agreement not only establishes vast new investor rights to acquire land, natural resources, financial and other firms and operate them under deregulated terms – it also elevates private investors to equal status as sovereign government signatories to the agreement. Under the U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) model, foreign investors and corporations are empowered to privately enforce their new ‘trade’ pact privileges by suing signatory governments and seeking monetary compensation for government actions they consider would undermine their expected future profits.

Dr Ryan said when signing the letter that there can be no doubt that the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is going to be a major issue in New Zealand over the coming months and years.

“It has significant implications for our members – especially regarding the provision, and indeed survival, of public services such as tertiary education, in this country and across the region.”

“Too many free trade agreements that have been negotiated recently give big corporations the right to go to secret international tribunals where they can either challenge or seek compensation for other countries’ labour laws, public provision of services and government support for public education. We don’t want to see that happen with this agreement,” said Dr Ryan.

A Ministry of Education report published this week shows that funding per equivalent full time student fell 3.2 percent between 2008 and 2009

The report, Outputs and outcomes of the government’s tertiary education expenditure 2005-2009, shows that while the government’s student achievement component funding increased between 2008 and 2009 by $70 million or 6.3 percent, this failed to match the combined effect of inflation and a rise in equivalent full-time students of 7.5 percent

The large rise in students meant that government funding increases were only enough to cover about half of the extra students.

TEU national president Dr Tom Ryan said that the report clarified the debate around tertiary education funding.

“The minister has repeatedly argued that funding is increasing, while those in the sector say all they see is budget cuts, redundancies and increased staff/student ratios.  The fact is that the minister’s new money barely goes half way to covering the cost of all the new students who we and the government are both encouraging to get an education. The net result is that there was $250 less for every student in 2009 than there was in 2008.”

“Students in 2009 would have needed an extra $100 million to get the same level of investment in their future as students in 2008 had. Students in 2010 and 2011 risk falling further behind as staff at tertiary institutions get by with reduced resources and less support per student,” said Dr Ryan.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Pike River mine disaster stuns Tai Poutini
2. Jobs, jobs, jobs
3. Employment rights erode with passing of bill
4. Lincoln-Telford merger gets green light
5. NZQA given more power over PTEs

Other news

Tertiary Education Union national industrial officer Irena Brorens said she was outraged and shocked council members voted yesterday to double their fees. Tutors have had nothing in two years, except a one-off payment of $700, she said. At yesterday’s council meeting in New Plymouth, councillors voted 6-2 for an increase which works out about double the current rate for council members. “How can they justify doubling their pay and giving us nothing?” Ms Brorens asked – Daily News

A cautionary tale about ranking institutions: Alexandria University in Egypt had been placed a surprisingly impressive 147th on the Times Higher Education Supplement’s list of top universities (only two places behind the University of Auckland). But, behind the headlines, Phil Baty, deputy editor of Times Higher Education, acknowledged that Alexandria’s surprising prominence was actually due to “the high output from one scholar in one journal” — soon identified on various blogs as Mohamed El Naschie, an Egyptian academic who published over 320 of his own articles in a scientific journal of which he was also the editor! –New York Times

In the wake of the military, shopping malls, and mosques, universities have become the latest target of the Pakistani Taliban, sowing terror among faculty members after a number of killings and kidnappings of prominent academics in the north-western region of the country - University World News

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TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. You can subscribe to Tertiary Update by email or feed reader. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz

Given the dramatic redundancies at the Tertiary Education Commission last year, and the government’s apparent preference for the Ministry of Education to be its main source of policy advice, rather than the commission, it is not surprising that the Ministry appears to be increasing its capacity to provide advice on tertiary education.

As recently as August the Public Services Association announced that the Ministry was cutting over 100 jobs, However, Tertiary Update understands that those cuts did not impact on the Ministry’s Tertiary Education Group

TEU national president Dr Tom Ryan said it was important that the policy support the TEC was previously funded to provide is replaced.

“The apparent growth of the Ministry’s Tertiary Education Group shows how politically-driven last year’s attacks on the commission were.  Just as a good tertiary education system needs to pay for good people out in the various tertiary education institutions around the country, so it also needs good people in its central bureaucracy,” said Dr Ryan.

“But maybe this means there is an opportunity for some of the many good people who lost their jobs in the sector this year to find a job advising the minister on tertiary education?”

The Green Party’s tertiary education spokesperson Gareth Hughes last week asked the minister for tertiary education, Steven Joyce if he intends to increase the maximum amount borrowed under the course related costs category if the Bill passes to allow students to pay for their voluntary student membership fees through this student loan category without reducing other course related costs they may face?

Mr Joyce’s reply, which was due on Tuesday, was not available at the time Tertiary Update went to print.

TEU national president Dr Tom Ryan says the question cuts to the heart of the problem for tertiary education staff.

“If students are not able to fund the services and the support their associations currently provide that means that tertiary institutions need to pay for them out of existing budgets.  That will either result in budget cuts in other areas of the institution or fewer services and less support for students, both of which ultimately make it harder to teach.”

As the vote was taking place student leaders were making a plea to prime minister John Key to “step in and save over a century of student representation and services from the Act Party.”

“Students are looking to John Key for his sensible leadership and pragmatism at this time. National has said it doesn’t want to destroy associations yet this is exactly what this Act Bill will do on many campuses,” said NZUSA co-president Pene Delaney.

There is mounting concern from students, universities, and polytechnics over the extra new costs this Bill will impose, as well as the future loss of services, student life, and student voice. Students and the rest of the tertiary education sector are worried that John Key and the Government do not fully understand the real and practical implications of this Bill.

• Sound Files
• Videos
• Photos

Sound files

Tom Ryan, Sandra Grey, Richard Draper and Ken Laraman on Radio NZ’s Checkpoint show

Dr Tom Ryan gives his president’s address to TEU conference

Sharn Riggs report as national secretary to TEU conference

Whaea Mere Broughton is presented with life membership of TEU

Minister of tertiary education Hon. Steven Joyce speaks to TEU conference

Videos

Women’s vice president Sandra Grey thanks the Minister for addressing conference

Union maids sing for their breakfast

Tom Ryan and Sandra Grey sing ‘Solidarity Forever’

Te Uepū sings Toro Mai Tō Ringa

Photos