HAU TAKI HAERE Tertiary Update No 10, 2026.

PBRF is out TREF is in - a new acronyn but no new funding

Last week, the Minister for Tertiary Education Penny Simmonds announced the Tertiary Research Excellence Fund, which replaces the old Performance-Based Research Fund.

It’s a new acronym, but a continuing lack of regard for the importance of research funding by this government coupled with high inflation effectively means a cut in real funding for research.

The new system is less bureaucratic but a blunt tool, nevertheless. The result will likely be a coalescing of existing research funds towards a narrower cohort of academic researchers. For example, the 30% Field-Weighted Citation Measure will likely favour established disciplines and those in line with the government’s funding priorities which more often than not already attract private research funds. The Commercialisation and Policy Impact funding components will have a similar effect. The humanities, and disciplines with creative elements will likely be most heavily impacted by this policy shift.

The Government has, to date, largely ignored Sir Peter Gluckman’s University Advisory Group report (read here), which the Government commissioned to provide independent advice on the effectiveness of the university system, as well as its challenges and opportunities. In particular the recommendation in the report to strengthen academic governance mechanisms within universities and for universities to "review internal processes reducing bureaucracy and excess managerialism, which drive costs and diminish morale" are critical cost-neutral steps that would have made real changes to the system we work in.

Garrick Cooper, Associate Professor at Canterbury and Co-President Māori of TEU spoke to RNZ about this last week. Read that story here.

Budget 2026 – what the figures mean when adjusted for inflation

The Government have cut $310 million to tertiary education when adjusted to account for inflation, stripping $138.4 million from tuition and training, $9.8 million from research funding, and $8.78 million from foundation and community education – despite nominal increases in some cases, the real-terms figures highlight the true impact.

Among those hardest hit are the learners traditionally underserved by the tertiary system with funding for access and success in tertiary education being cut by $7.9 million. Additionally, polytechnic funding is down by $183 million while private training establishment funding rises by $181 million, indicating a clear shift toward the privatisation of vocational education and training.

The government has also abolished the final-year fees-free scheme, disinvesting $1.033 billion from the tertiary sector over four years, with $69 million going toward secondary school Trades Academies. With fees-free gone, students will leave university carrying significantly more debt – a burden that is further compounded by tertiary institutions being permitted to raise domestic tuition fees by up to 6% for the third consecutive year. Given these increases compound, this means students are potentially paying 19.1% more in tuition fees than in 2024. To put that in context, the total compounded fee increase over the previous six years under the prior government was just 11.3%, meaning the current coalition government has imposed nearly double that increase in half the time.

Tertiary education is a public good – one that depends on the skilled, committed workforce that TEU members provide every day. New Zealanders deserve better than a government that balances its books on the backs of students and the staff who teach them.

NZCTU have just released their Worker's analysis of Budget 2026 which you can read here.

Definition of Woman (and Man) Amendment Bill – join our submission party!

We will be holding a submission writing session, hosted by co-president Ti Lamusse about the completely unnecessary and divisive New Zealand First bill.

This is an opportunity to discuss the bill, have your questions answered and then take some time to write your own submission.

An invitation to the submission writing party has gone out in the member email. 

If you aren’t able to join this submission writing party, you can write your own submission, you can use the following piece as a guide (read more here).

Professional Policies

TEU recently completed a review of our professional policies. Our professional policies cover a range of issues which relate to the working lives of TEU members, including academic freedom, workplace democracy, and tertiary education and climate change.

Each policy outlines our aspirations and actions, alongside relevant contextual information. These policies are intentionally concise and are intended to support the submission and lobbying work of staff and members.

You can check them out here: https://teu.ac.nz/about/professional-policies/

The content of our professional policies is directly informed by our committees and networks. We are now underway with developing a policy on artificial intelligence. Watch this space!