Fees Maxima
I’ve all along said the Fees Maxima policy was stupid. Now look who is campaigning to get rid of it? The man who introduced them – Steve Maharey.
But, he says, individual policies should change over time, and one on which he will campaign is the fee maxima.
“When I put that policy in place, it was for three years. It’s now five years and it urgently needs to be changed.
I say get rid of it for all universities except Massey 
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Tags: hypocrisy, Steve Maharey, tertiary fees
January 5th, 2009 at 9:41 am
It wouldn’t have anything to do with the promotion of dogma versus logic would it? Now that the mental straitjacket has been removed are we seeing the first signs of intellectual life reappearing in Maharey? Presumably the selection committee saw something in him worthy of rehabilitation.
Time will tell.
January 5th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Rehabilitation.
Not until he rescinds his statement ” I see no social science that says the nuclear family is the best option.”
Rubbish, they should be ashamed of themselves.
January 5th, 2009 at 9:50 am
I have no idea what “Fees Maxima” is or means and a quick search turned up no real explanation so I’m guessing here but if it means charging as much as the market will allow for the marketable asset that is a university degree I’m all for it.
Of course if they returned universities to their rightful purposes and shifted all “mechanical” type study to the more suitable “polytechs” I would change my mind.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:27 am
The Fees Maxima policy was one which removed the right of tertiary institutions to set their own fees, and let the Minister effectively decide how much they can increase fees by.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:43 am
“I would really like the opportunity to reshape our fees. Not losing the maxima idea, but let us have a go at reshaping our fees so we get them more realistically aligned with the costs.”
Sounds like user pays to me. Maharey has been studying hard for his revisionism.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:09 am
As I understand it, the universities cannot increase their fees for basic degree courses by more than 5% without putting a case to the TEC (who rarely grant exemptions). Again, as far as I am aware, postgrad degrees are not subject to this constraint.
The universities argue that changes in numbers of students, combined with staffing costs, are diminishing the effective funding per student by considerably more than 5%, and so there is a big squeeze on all services provided.
If I had my way, I would first reduce the size of all university adminsitration significantly. Way too many “central” functions not connected to teaching or research. They seem to put teaching and research at risk in order to have more strategic planners, customer relation managers, marketers, HR people, etc. These are all fine in their way, but just as (I think Bill English said) there are more administrators than hospital beds, so too things have got out of proportion in the tertiary
sector.
Just to be clear, I have no mandate to speak for my employer, and I am sure my honestly held, and possibly naive view would be at odds with theirs.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Because the other university’s are all strong supporters of fees maxima?
The Fees Freeze removed the right. It was the policy of Labour for their first term. Fees maxima just didn’t reverse it.
For their second term Labour changed their policy from freezing fees to “keeping education affordable”. Which meant that maximum fees would be set, and maximum amounts by which fees could be raised were also set (initially 10%, now 5%). The Fees Maxima are set at different levels for different courses (e.g. arts course are the cheapest).
January 5th, 2009 at 11:28 am
That’s a bit overstated, it was a policy to limit increases linked to funding and various cost-factors. It’s not uncommon for government to have significant influence over fees, particularly where they’re the major funder – Australian university fees are also set in relation to government funding too (HECS scheme). Even admissions to Australian universities are centralised… quell horreur!
I appreciate the schadenfreude, and I don’t know quite know what Steve means by his comment about the three year limit – perhaps it’s a reference to his strategy to reduce debt?
It’s worth considering a bundle of policies, not just one or two. Setting fees makes a degree of sense if you’re the funding body and you also provide finance students, much of which goes on fees (remembering the original loan system was never designed for fee levels circa 1995). I’d want some oversight of universities if there was no limitation on universities/poly’s ability to see fees. My point is that fee regulation or not needs to be peered with complementary policies and there’s risks associated with simply changing one setting but not others.
Steve’s in an odd position, but he’s plenty smart so it’ll be interesting to see how he goes and what he comments on.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
This comment was part of an article that read as a puff piece for the egregious Maharey. He then went on in the same piece to talk as if he was still a Minister
http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/12144/
January 6th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Fees maxima. Ho hum.
However the elephant in the sitting room is that NZ’s tertiary education sector is a mindboggling ramshackle moneypit. How could it be otherwise since this wee country of only 4 million people [the size of a lower-middle ranking city elsewhere] sees fit to have no less than 8 universities, 20-plus polytechnics and umpteen bucket-shop PTE’s?
This is an insane waste of taxpayers’ money. Radical amalgamation is required. The sooner the better.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Shameless Maharey, the double-dipper, casting opinion and trying to influence policy. What a cheek this man has!
January 6th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Flashman, there are 90-odd thousand foreign fee-paying students in the system at the moment too!
January 6th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Flashman, I agree some rationalisation is needed and wonder about the merits of some PTEs, but how’d you do it? Savings through economies of scale are desirous, but there’s a transaction cost and mergers don’t increase innovation or participation (not that I think we’ve got a participation problem – in aggregate at least).
January 8th, 2009 at 6:40 am
Stephen – all those foreign students are there to provide an essential subsidy to NZ tertiary education institutions who cannot achieve sustained viability off the back of a teeny-weenie local population base. It’s even worse – I know of regional polytechnics [of all things!] delivering courses in mainland China motivated simply on the basis of making an earnings contribution. The reason all this diploma-mill cash cow milking is needed is traceable to the fact that approximately $1 in every $5 goes to support central overheads in these institutions and these overhead expense are duplicated in every one of the 8 universities and 20+ polytechnics. You do the math and ask yourself what the value students and taxpayers are getting out of this arrangement.
Paul – the Aussies had precisely the same problem up until the early 1990′s. Too many marginal providers that traced their origins to scattered communities with 19th Century transport infrastructure. The solution was to give all providers 18 months to find merger partners since the mandate was 5000+ EFTS makes you a university, and anything less makes you TAFE [effectively a skills based community college]. The sky didn’t fall and I would say that overall efficiencies increased.
Another tertiary sector money making wheeze is building white elephant facilities – for the maximum they can afford – in order to take the depreciation write-off. Again, these glamour buildings look great with their gold letters next to the door celebrating the name of some chairman of the council, but they contribute precious little to their students. For example I know of one institution that has blown all of its financial reserves on such a construction.
NZ tertiary needs an aggressively applied blowtorch.