Comments on Controversial Reform in New Zealand

• Posted by P on January 8, 2008 at 8:00am EST

• If they follow Melbourne University, problems may result. These have been several.
  1) political uncertainty - Australia has just seen a change of government, making certain of the Melbourne reforms unnecessary. If this happens in NZ-for example changing the way teaching and research money is allocated - things may get worse not better and it may have been more advantageous to keep up undergrad numbers. Only private univerities are immune from this concern.
  2) income problems - you cannot drop undergrad numbers until grad programs are up and running and proven successful - this takes 5 years at least, not 2-3 as university managers would like
  3) a peripheral location in the world does not attract high numbers of international postgrad applicants and never will - and those applicants all want scholarships, because fees Down Under are pretty high to foreign students. Do not rely on foreign students to improve the university bank balances. Thsi is a major problem that Australasia is learning the hard way.
  4) Moving to postgrad from an undergrad focus does not necessarily release much faculty time to do more research. The workload just shifts.
  5) A major constraint on building up research capacity in NZ and Aus is actually the poor levels of research grant funding available nationally. This is a problem that can only be addressed by the government, not by the university. If you are a researcher requiring research funding, it is simply easier to obtain sufficient $$ in USA or in Europe. In my field, the 'hit rate' for national awards is x3 in UK what it is in Australia. And the pay is substantially less.
  6) In the Melbourne transition to less undergrads and more focus on research, many staff were treated poorly - incited to take early retirement, having their administrative arrangements streamlined (cut), being combined into new Schools that did not work, and having longstanding teaching commitments changed. Good staff actually resigned as a result of these changes.
  7) remember - major restructuring is often used to do two things - to enhance the university profile, but also to save money. Staff need to be on the lookout for the latter - it can cost them their jobs.
  8) also remember - without excellent staff - which means paying them and giving them ironclad contracts - you do not have a research university of any worth at all. Restructuring always seems to move the deckchairs in such a way that staff get disadvantaged (see recently: Brunel, Monash, Melbourne, Macquarie, etc.). Academic staff generally hate restructuring: I know I do. It means more work and losing colleagues, who are not replaced.

• Wrong interpretation
• Posted by Gavin , Principal Policy Adviser at Griffith University, Australia on January 9, 2008 at 5:15pm EST

• The journalist David Cohen mis-states the reason for change at the University of Auckland. It is an implementation of the New Zealand Government's change from the previous policy which was a virtual voucher which funded institutions by student numbers to funding institutions according to their institutional plan agreed with the Tertiary Education Commission. See

  http://www.tec.govt.nz/templates/standard.aspx?id=482

• Controversial Reform in NZ
• Posted by Stuart Middleton , Dr at Manukau Institute of Technology on January 11, 2008 at 3:45pm EST

• I too think that Cohen has missed the point. A key policy in the current reform of postsecpondary education is New Zealand is that of"distinctive contributions". Rather than all large tertiary institutions competing against each other, there should be a clear difference in purpose and configuration between universities and polytechnics and between them and the others.

  This also allows for distinctions between universities. It was the Dearing rule of thumb that you needed 3 million people to have one world class elite university. New Zealand, on this basis, should have one.

  Writing in NZ Education Review (13 December 2007) I supported this move by the University of Auckland to become a world class and elite university, New Zealand's only such university, and had this to say:

  "Now, the first step is to be honest about the high degree of selectivity that the University of Auckland will need to indulge in to get there. I just hope that they become more confident and open about that. It was a bit specious to see them declare that their goal was to become better rather than bigger but then try to blame it on government funding policies. It was always a mistake to think that bigger was better – the only sort of better is better! The university that sets out to be world class is the university that wants to be better than the rest. It is not a defensive position adopted to cope with government policy – it is the aggressive position of the ambitious.

  So they will have to get the best students through the gate. No fudging on that one. I was surprised that there was then a claim that this goal would not adversely affect the mix of students gaining admission. Of course it will. It has everywhere else in the world. To be more selective is to be more selective and that means that the students will increasingly come from richer communities and will be predominantly Pakeha and Asian.

  It is also a little amusing to think that criteria other than academic excellence will prevail. Wanting students who are good at debating, steeped in the arts, articulate and who have made a contribution to the community sounds good but is not easy to assess or to apply any fair measure of comparability between applicants. One judicial review will be all that it takes to see the test scores prevail.

  If we are to have a system in which there are distinctive contributions then Auckland is the obvious setting for us to see real differences between providers which in turn offer real choices to students. The Auckland tertiary scene - a world class university, an Auckland campus of a regional university, a university of technology, two polytechnics and a strong set of private providers is exactly the range of tertiary provision that a large city should have. You couldn’t run a highly selective university in any other city without curtailing choice."

• Posted by Professor Stuart McCutcheon , Vice-Chancellor at The University of Auckland on January 24, 2008 at 6:10am EST

• David Cohen is incorrect in asserting that New Zealand universities are now being funded only "on the perceived quality of their research". He is equally wrong to claim that the University of Auckland will be "trimming back on its cohort of undergraduate admissions over the coming decade".
  What has changed is that government no longer funds universities and other tertiary institutions for every enrolled student (the so-called "bums on seats" model). The new funding regime restricts student tuition funding to a level determined by the government’s Tertiary Education Commission. The number of students to be funded in particular funding categories is negotiated with each institution.
  David Cohen harks back to the research "top-ups" which used to form a minor part of the government's contribution to funding for each student. These have now been transferred to the Performance Based Research Fund which rewards research quality and for which institutions have to compete.
  The University of Auckland is not reducing undergraduate numbers per se. Rather, its Strategic Plan commits to an overall annual growth averaging 1 percent and an increase in the proportion of postgraduate students from 18 to 22% over the next five years. In order to achieve this and in response to the new government policy of negotiated limited funding we have given ourselves the tools to manage undergraduate numbers should this become necessary. Without this precautionary measure we could find ourselves with unfunded students.
  We will now be able to manage admission to meet agreed numbers in faculties where entry was previously unrestricted: Arts, Education, Science, first-year Law and Theology. First-year entry has long been limited elsewhere (in Architecture, Business and Economics, Engineering, Fine Arts, Music, Medical and Health Sciences). In practice we expect little change to the numbers admitted to the newly restricted faculties.

• Posted by P on January 25, 2008 at 7:30am EST

• It would be nice if Auckland's VC could comment on whether my assessment of Melbourne's restructuring efforts, designed to pull itself ahead of the pack and to insure financial stability, is correct. The effect on staff has been major, and the 'structural' issue of geographical position, availability of research funding, supply of foreign students etc. lie outside the University's control.