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Vic Uni’s injunction should be nominated for an award for biggest backfire of the year. Has got ten times more publicity now.
On a side note, in this Dominion Post story on the issue, they somehow manage to make Salient Editor Emily Braunstein look tall. How do they manage that? 
UPDATE: Anna Nuzum makes the excellent point that if there is a 10% increase in fees, then one of the people to blame is the VUWSA President who campaigned for big pay increases for staff, despite many people saying this will lead to fees increasing.
UPDATE 2: Keith Ng blogs on the latest from Vic Uni which really makes them look like idiots.
The new Vic VC is meant to be a bit of a leftie and popular with the students association, so I wonder where this bout of madness is coming from as it seems out of character for him. I wonder if the Government is pressuring them, as the Govt is the one with the most to lose with the story getting out.
October 4th, 2005 at 9:19 pm
No – to insure teaching-learning quality we need to make sure that our best lecturers are paid well and that there isn’t a 30% pay disparity between us and Australia in real terms.
The tertiary sector needs more funding. You can talk about the private-public balance in tertiary education, but it just shows that the state isn’t meeting its commitment in funding universities and tertiary institutes – especially with flawed methodologies like EFTS funding.
The move to PBRF is better, but still has many flaws.
Why should fees increase at a rate any more than inflation?
The state needs to invest more in tertiary education, and there should be bottom lines in which how much students are expected to carry the burden – especially as it ends up delaying home-ownership and starting a family.
Furthermore there are equity issues that make it plainly unjust.
In highly competitive courses and degrees expecting students to finance not only their degree but their day to day basic living requirements solely through part time work is unreasonable at best.
October 4th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
No – to insure teaching-learning quality we need to make sure that our best lecturers are paid well and that there isn’t a 30% pay disparity between us and Australia in real terms.
The tertiary sector needs more funding. You can talk about the private-public balance in tertiary education, but it just shows that the state isn’t meeting its commitment in funding universities and tertiary institutes – especially with flawed methodologies like EFTS funding.
The move to PBRF is better, but still has many flaws.
Why should fees increase at a rate any more than inflation?
The state needs to invest more in tertiary education, and there should be bottom lines in which how much students are expected to carry the burden – especially as it ends up delaying home-ownership and starting a family.
Furthermore there are equity issues that make it plainly unjust.
In highly competitive courses and degrees expecting students to finance not only their degree but their day to day basic living requirements solely through part time work is unreasonable at best.
October 4th, 2005 at 9:37 pm
The VUW Council have a long tradition of acting like asses. They have a culture of inordinate secrecy when it comes to making decisions like setting fees, which goes totally against their role as governors of a public institution. Its therefore not surprising they have over-reacted on this issue.
This isn’t really about raising fees – its about a sick culture. Unfortunately the new VC appears to have gone along with this long-standing illness. Pity.
October 4th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Pay increases for university staff – absolutely. University staff have lost significant pay relativity with other occupations classed in their playing field, lawyers, politicians etc.
Blaming Jeremy for the fact that this *might* be passed onto students at Vic – totally unfair.
I don’t think the question is whether staff should be paid more, it’s really who should pay for it – the students, or the taxpayer.
October 4th, 2005 at 11:24 pm
Agree with Caleb and Maria about pay for lecturers. NZ stands no chance in the long run if all its decent academics bugger off overseas for better pay. Why should they be any different from the other people the right wing throws its hands up in horror about when talking about people leaving for Australia etc? It is not taxes here that drives people overseas, but poor pay.
The smart thing for someone to do in the present circumstances would be to request the papers concerned from VUW under the Official Information Act. From what I’ve read on Stuff, one of the university’s arguments is that they have proactively applied an exemption from the right of access under that Act. This is a little reminiscent of Mark Prebble’s claims in the Corngate affair, if I recall correctly. Which didn’t end without tears either.
Personally, if what has been reported by Keith and other news organisations is accurate, I find it hard to believe the judge will grant VUW the permanent injunction they are seeking. In the event that he does, APN/Fairfax/Canwest better pull their fingers out to fund Salient’s appeal or they’ll be in the same boat next time…
October 5th, 2005 at 9:12 am
Keith didn’t write the article, or have any of the documents leaked to him.
Pay for uni staff is sh*t in this country. They could go to Europe and get the same figure but in Euro rather than NZ$.
There needs to be more government funding of universities, the VC is right in that respect.
October 5th, 2005 at 4:18 pm
Looks like Salient has been released.
October 5th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
or rather, Vic said they would release the magazines, which they had been holding without legal justification.
But then they couldn’t find them.
But then, when the mainstream media showed up, they did.
You might see it on the news