Latest news with #TertiaryEducationUnion
Scoop
4 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Supported Learners Carry The Burden Of Minister's Delusion
Minister of Vocational Education Penny Simmonds told the Education and Workforce Select Committee yesterday that she thinks most polytechnics are overstaffed, describing what she considers high staffing levels as 'abysmal'. Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union is pointing to cuts currently proposed to educational opportunities for supported learners as a prime example of the human cost of her delusion. Weltec and Whitieria are proposing to disestablish both of their existing Level 1 Certificates in Skills for Living; and Skills for Learning and Working for Supported Learners. Along with the four full time equivalent staff members, the greater Wellington region will lose the only programmes of this kind for learners with disabilities if the proposal goes ahead. Kaiwhakahaere | Organiser Drew Mayhem says 'there is considerable demand for both these programmes within the community. Student numbers have not decreased. These cuts are purely due to the government's inability and unwillingness to provide a level of baseline funding that will avoid further contraction of the sector before it is in a permanent death spiral.' Te Pou Ahurei | National Secretary Sandra Grey says 'the Minister uses an 18:1 student/staff ratio as a blunt instrument to measure viability but this misses the point of why we need polytechnics. If 12 disabled young people want to gain work skills in Porirua, why wouldn't we fund that? By her reckoning those 12 young people miss out on the future they deserve and 12 businesses miss out on great workers.' 'Furthermore, the Minister's Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill, if passed, will only further destabilise the provision of vocational education, as the bill provides no clarity on what the future of the sector looks like beyond closures and possible privatisation. New Zealanders deserve better. They were promised regional autonomy but instead are having our tertiary providers hollowed out from within.' To have your say on the Bill, click here for the TEU's submission guide, and here to make your submission by midnight tonight.
RNZ News
12-06-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
NZ: Pacific and Māori student support cut
Photo: RNZ / Ziming Li Education advocates in Aotearoa New Zealand say a government decision to remove special funding for Pacific and Māori students in vocational training harks back to the days of a one-size-fits-all model. The funding cut applies to a per-student subsidy for Pacific and Māori enrolments at polytechnics and private training institutions. Currently, the subsidiary is used to help fund dedicated support services for these students. However, the Tertiary Education Commission - the government agency responsible for distributing - has stated that it is being re-prioritised. Tertiary Education Union national secretary Sandra Grey said the move was a huge step backwards. It also contradicted official advice to vocational education minister Penny Simmonds. A cabinet paper from January advised the government to keep the subsidy, which came out of a fund of about NZ$28 million. Specifically, officials recommended it be kept to help "achieve equitable outcomes" for three groups of learners - Māori and Pacific students, students with low achievement levels, and disabled students. While the funding allocation has remained for students with low achievement levels and disabled students, the money for Pacific and Māori has gone elsewhere. That decision from policy makers, Grey said, further hurt Pacific and Māori students who were already underserved in the New Zealand education system. "What we do know with dedicated funding is that we get positions like a Māori learning support expert who comes in and works with Māori students, or a Pacific staff member who comes in and supports Pacific students," she said. Tertiary Education Union president Dr Sandra Grey Photo: RNZ / Ian Telfer These included initiatives and programmes like provided mentoring, guidance and peer support to Pacific and Māori. "We've seen from history is that when there is no dedicated fund, institutions deprioritise this work because there aren't dedicated funds. They do what they are funded to do," Grey said. "They've [the government] just said: 'It doesn't matter that you're Māori or Pacific. That has no bearing on your learning.' They are wrong. Everything says these students learn better when they have dedicated support from Māori and Pacific staff." The funding cut was indicative of the government's lack of understanding around why a "one-size-fits-all model in education" did not work, she said. At Manukau Institute of Technology in South Auckland, senior lecturer Alby Fitisemanu said the impact of programmes and support services specific to Pacific and Māori was not to be underestimated. Most of Fitisemanu's students were Pacific and Māori. The support services for these students helped ensure they moved beyond enrolment, he said. For example, programmes and support services contributed to student attainment and success, particularly because many Pacific and Māori often felt out-of-place in tertiary institutions, Fitisemanu said. "The problem we're having now is for the Pasifika [students] who are enrolled... very few complete along the journey. And so it's being able to bring in those supports all the way through their journey." Labour's tertiary education spokersperson Shanan Halbert said the funding cut was part of a bigger revamp to the sector where references to the needs of Māori and Pacific students were being removed from education legislation. Alongside that, references to Te Tiriti o Waitangi were also being deleted, he said. It was inconsistent with research on student needs in Aotearoa, Halbert said. "If you look at where Māori and Pacific learners sit in our education system, they have the greatest need, and so the the additional support is required to ensure that they're achieving what they need to. But also that they're that they're staying within the courses until they're completed." Minister Simmonds responded to questions from RNZ Pacific in a statement. National Party MP Penny Simmonds in select committee. Photo: Phil Smith She said the government was working towards "a more streamlined, outcomes-focused approach that supports all learners… through mechanisms that are targeted, evidence-based, and accountable". Simmonds also acknowledged the advice she'd received from education officials, but said the decision to remove the Māori and Pacific enrolment subsidiary had been a Cabinet decision. "The Cabinet collectively agreed that a broader reset of vocational education funding was needed to reduce complexity and ensure every dollar delivers results." When asked where the funding for Māori and Pacific was being directed, she said details were yet to be finalised.
Sydney Morning Herald
04-06-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Major university announces cuts to jobs and degrees
Macquarie University is set to axe more than 50 academic jobs in a proposed restructure that the Tertiary Education Union says will cut degrees in archaeology, music and ancient languages. Staff were told via videoconference on Tuesday afternoon about the 'workforce realignment' proposal for the arts and science faculties, which the university says will save it $15 million a year. The plan is to cut course offerings with low enrolments so that the institution can focus on areas of demand. The union says the arts faculty faces 42 job losses while the science and engineering faculty has 33 staff facing redundancies – a total of 75. University management quantified the figure as between 50 and 60. Staff say the reduced academic offering poses a reputational risk to the university and follows years of belt-tightening, which led to larger class sizes. Macquarie is the latest in a string of universities across NSW to retrench staff, with the University of Technology and Western Sydney University both planning to dump 400 employees. The University of Wollongong has plans to axe up to 270 positions. The job cuts come as mid-tier universities brace for reduced income from the international student market after Education Minister Jason Clare instructed immigration bureaucrats to deliberately slow the processing of visa applications once an institution reaches 80 per cent of a designated enrolment cap. The restructuring at Macquarie is part of a broader plan that its management says will bolster long-term sustainability. 'Universities in Western democracies are facing a range of external pressures and Australia is no exception. Accordingly, we are acting with a clear vision and a strong sense of responsibility to ensure our education and research remain relevant, impactful and sustainable,' vice chancellor Professor S. Bruce Dowton said.
The Age
04-06-2025
- Business
- The Age
Major university announces cuts to jobs and degrees
Macquarie University is set to axe more than 50 academic jobs in a proposed restructure that the Tertiary Education Union says will cut degrees in archaeology, music and ancient languages. Staff were told via videoconference on Tuesday afternoon about the 'workforce realignment' proposal for the arts and science faculties, which the university says will save it $15 million a year. The plan is to cut course offerings with low enrolments so that the institution can focus on areas of demand. The union says the arts faculty faces 42 job losses while the science and engineering faculty has 33 staff facing redundancies – a total of 75. University management quantified the figure as between 50 and 60. Staff say the reduced academic offering poses a reputational risk to the university and follows years of belt-tightening, which led to larger class sizes. Macquarie is the latest in a string of universities across NSW to retrench staff, with the University of Technology and Western Sydney University both planning to dump 400 employees. The University of Wollongong has plans to axe up to 270 positions. The job cuts come as mid-tier universities brace for reduced income from the international student market after Education Minister Jason Clare instructed immigration bureaucrats to deliberately slow the processing of visa applications once an institution reaches 80 per cent of a designated enrolment cap. The restructuring at Macquarie is part of a broader plan that its management says will bolster long-term sustainability. 'Universities in Western democracies are facing a range of external pressures and Australia is no exception. Accordingly, we are acting with a clear vision and a strong sense of responsibility to ensure our education and research remain relevant, impactful and sustainable,' vice chancellor Professor S. Bruce Dowton said.
Scoop
03-06-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
Universities Will Be Weakened By Budget Focus On STEM And Science
, Education correspondent Universities warn next year's funding boost for science courses and other STEM subjects won't drive up enrolments in those fields. They also calculate that the government's decision to increase funding for STEM subjects but not for most other fields next year is a net zero. That's because the Budget allowed an emergency two-year four percent funding boost to lapse. Craig Marshall, an associate professor in Otago University's School of Biomedical Sciences and member of the Tertiary Education Union's council, told RNZ without a serious funding increase, universities would increasingly struggle to offer the research-informed teaching that defined them. Marshall said the ongoing decline in university funding compared to inflation could prove fatal. "I think it'll be incremental," he said. "You'll just see small losses here and there and everywhere else and at the end of it all it's very difficult to predict what that leads to but perhaps the loss of a university." Marshall said the latest decisions meant universities would struggle to offer some humanities courses and students would start to vote with their feet. "What we're starting to see is students instead of coming to universities in New Zealand from school, they'll go to universities overseas. They see that as a better outcome," he said. "Increasingly, students opt now for postgrad graduate training outside of New Zealand, rather than in New Zealand. Some of the universities will be weakened, some may be fatally weakened." Marshall agreed the government was unlikely to let a university to go under, but one or more could lose the ability to provide the research-informed teaching that fostered critical thought - in which case it would cease to be a university in all but name. Universities New Zealand chief executive Chris Whelan said the long-term trend for university funding was poor, but none of the eight institutions was close to failing. "It's becoming challenging to basically retain our position internationally. We shouldn't care about things like international rankings, but the reality is they do send quite important signals to academic staff, to people that want to do research collaborations with New Zealand researchers and to international students," he said, referring to league tables in which New Zealand universities had been falling. "There is a tipping point where if funding got so low we were not able to maintain that quality, we would have a problem. But I don't think we're anywhere near that." However, Whelan said the net effect of the Budget was no increase to total university funding next year. He said that was about as good as the sector could have expected under the circumstances. But he said the government's decision to favour STEM subjects over humanities was mistaken. "It's an unfortunate message. There seems to be a belief that somehow universities, if they're given more funding for science, technology, engineering, maths-type subjects, can persuade students to drop doing the liberal arts or social sciences and shift across. The reality is that's just not the case," he said. Whelan said all fields of university study contributed to the skilled workforce the government said it wanted. Universities minister Shane Reti told RNZ that was correct but STEM subjects were more closely linked to productivity. "The message we're sending is that we're particularly investing and funding those courses that clearly have a pathway to productivity and economic gain and these are generally the science and the STEM subjects," he said. Reti said enrolments in those subjects had been increasing and the funding decision should encourage universities to increase the breadth and depth of their STEM programmes. He said universities were not sliding toward failure. "Across the sector, there are some who are doing well and some who are struggling and indeed have been struggling for some period of time and and are receiving extra attention support and monitoring from TEC," he said. "But if we look at the big picture, there's a significant increase in student numbers this year... It's quite a change in trend from over the previous few years where student numbers have been falling away." Reti said the government had allocated $111m over the next two years to cover growing university enrolments. He confirmed that the government had allocated enough funding to cover 99 percent of expected enrolments next year and the Tertiary Education Commission would be expected to cover the remainder from its reserves. Changing shares of the enrolment pie Education Ministry figures show the sciences have lost ground against other subjects in terms of enrolments in Bachelors degrees in the past 10 years. Considered by predominant field of study, the percentage of students enrolled in the "natural and physical sciences" dropped from 14 to 13 percent between 2024 and 2015. Health enrolments rose from 17 to 20 percent while education, management and commerce, and the creative arts all dropped slightly. Predominant field of study for 120,995 domestic students enrolled in Bachelors degree programmes in 2024 and 127,705 in 2015. Subject 2015 2024 Sciences 14 percent 13 percent IT 6 percent 7 percent Engineering 3 percent 3 percent Arch and building 2 percent 3 percent Ag, envmnt 2 percent 2 percent Health 17 percent 20 percent Education 8 percent 7 percent Mngmnt, commerce 20 percent 18 percent Society and culture 33 percent 33 percent Creative arts 11 percent 10 percent
