Another example of our racist oppression in action.

D’ya see how insidious it all is?

Won’t someone think of the children?

Now thats enterprise……………

“Look it up on wikipedia. Sharples is a Te Aute old boy and was a professor of education at Auckland University. His MA had first class honours and his PhD was in Anthropology & Linguistics.

What are you trying to suggest?”

I’m suggesting he got it by merit, and is proof that Maori can achieve without having a free pass. Its a slap in the face to those Maori who have got to university like everyone else, and he of all people should know that.

If they had colonised NZ and done the same and on the same scale to Maori, all that would be left of Maori now would be the tourist villages at Rotorua.

Another way of looking at it is that colonisation was inevitable. The question was by whom, and I think in this Maori were lucky.

Look what happened to the indigenous people of South America at the hands of Spanish and Portuguese. Look at what happened more recently and is still happening to the indigenous people of West Irian at the hands of the Indonesians.

At an evolutionary stage that hand’t reached a written language or even the wheel, Maori would have been all but wiped out by any of these three colonisers.

On stealing land, note that many Maori were very willing sellers of their land — and of others’ land.

Maori have endured much in the last two centuries, but they have also gained much from their interaction with the British and the West generally.

Feeder sounds pejorative, and I did not intend it to be so. What I would like to see is a university system rather like the California system, with one or two flagship institutions, and pockets of specialization at postgrad level elsewhere. At the same time, the system should be capable of providing a good undergrad education across all campuses.

I’d also like to see us look towards the Melbourne model, and focus on broadly-based undergraduate education for the first three years, with little specialization. That can come later in a more specialised masters program. Adapting it for New Zealand, I would expect all six mainstream universities to offer roughly comparable undergrad degrees, with a system set up to channel most, but not all, masters and PhD students to the flagship institutions.

You say “What we need are those who WANT to go and are willing to work for it.” I agree wholeheartedly. It’s not clear to me how we separate those students out, other than by some form of screening exam or record of past success.

I do think that this country needs to have a think about what it does with its tertiary system, and whether it might not be time for a major rethink. Too many young people don’t belong at university, but there is no layer of generic tertiary education between the universities and the more vocationally-oriented polytechs. If these young people don’t want a trade, and shouldn’t be at university, where do they go? One alternative might be creating a new type of institution that covers the year 12, 13 and first 18 months of university.

Agreed about the A vs. B students, although I’d like to have hard-working As

Also, Otago and Auckland? I remember some politician years ago suggesting that, and it was pointed out that they were NOT the best at many subjects (including science and engineering). Canterbury, Vic, Massey … are best at _something_, and to suggest they become “feeder” schools is to show a lack of understanding of what a uni is and what it contributes. (Too little space here to go through that.)

Finally, I will always prefer a hard-working B student to a lazy A student. The former tend to succeed and do well, the latter take up space.

I cannot understand why the fucking wet-your-pants sissies in parliament don’t stand up to this underwhelming racist fuckhole and tell him where to go stick his rangatira.

I’ll tell you what, I’ve known a fair few Maori students in my time, and 90% were absolutely fucking useless. They were shepherded through their degrees, got shitloads of support and tutoring at my fucking expense and then come out with degrees when I wouldn’t fucking trust them to tie their own fucking goddamn shoelaces. FUCK THAT. Ironically, I can name about 5 other Maori and a couple of Pacific Islanders who thought, “Fuck this”, and didn’t take any of the crap that people handed them, and they are actually pretty decent students who are earning their degrees.

Everyone in this country needs to fuck right the fucking hell off with their bullshit need to blame every other prick but themselves for their own fucking shitty failures.

If Maori aren’t doing well it’s their own fucking fault.

Besides, it’s not like getting any old bachelors degree is
a) difficult
b) worth anything

I’d love to see the breakdowns of softcock degrees vs. real degrees.

The root problem with tertiary education quality in this country is the ludicrous notion that everyone has the right to go to university, combined with the equally ridiculous notion that there’s some virtue in there being roughly equivalent quality institutions scattered around the country.

Funding for universities is entirely tied to volumes of students, with no attempt to distinguish between good quality or bad quality. What the government needs to do is to get over its fear of elitism and set up a way to fund a couple of universities to become really top class (Otago and Auckland probably) and the others can become feeder schools. Get rid of government mandated entry conditions and let the good ones get the good students.

Little Whetu at school:

“You want to go to university little Whetu?”

“Nah. F..k that.”

“Oh, why not, it is open for you, think of all the wonderful opportunities waiting for you. You could be a doctor or a lawyer.”

“Waste 4 years of classes? No way man. I’m gonna be a Maori politician like my uncle and represent our downtrodden race. You white fullas have stolen our harbours and our fushes and whales. He never went to no whitie university. And he has plenty of money to spend each weak at the TAB eh.”

What I notice is that open access for all is fine, BUT as DPF suggested, too many young people go to uni when they should go someplace else and do something else. I see year in year out so many students who should NOT be at uni.

What’s interesting is that there is open access – after a certain age (I forget the number right now), anyone can enter as a mature student, with no NCEA or school cert requirements. I have always enjoyed having mature students in my classes. They are motivated, they have “been there done that” and now know better than any school leaver what they want and where they want to head. Maori, PI, pakeha, whatever … the mature students are motivated. And even if they failed high school maths, they work hard to overcome their lack and more often than not succeed. AND they are often the class leaders.

“Sorry about stealing your land, destroying your culture and marginalizing your people for the last 200 years, how about we stop doing that, and we call it even? “

If you think that comment reflects my views then you are very very wrong. I have commented before that we should settle grievances as quick as possible. I have no issue with returning land and other assets plus paying compensation. Compensation is however measurable (and final) which is probably why people who like to re-write history don’t like it.

If you think the answer to the pendulum swinging against Maori is to artificially pull it back to the other side then look out when it starts to swing again. I would rather we moved it to the middle by addressing the causes of the imbalance. This might take more time and some commitment from Maori.

Think about offering free access to tertiary education as being similar to making custodial sentences shorter for Maori – it offers no incentive to change root behaviour rather it merely compensates for status quo. Status quo is broken – why perpetuate it?

the victim mentality never works!

Those rare individuals who clearly identify themselves as Maori who elect to enter more mainstream programmes of study [commerce, sciences] tend to really struggle and often fail to complete – either through self-elimination [most commonly] or academic failure. On the other hand, those who are Maori but who do not ostentatiously “identify” themselves as such tend to do very, very well indeed in degree studies in the “employment ready” fields of commerce, science etc.. One theory I have is that these latter high-achievers are not saddled with the appallingly corrosive “Who do you fink you are bro? You fink you better us?” disparagement from their loser social peers.

In the wider context, the buzz is that the tertiary education mandarins in Wellington are hot to trot on tieing institutional funding to “completion rates”. In other words, to get paid, simply enrolling a student is not enough – it is necessary for that student to pass the course/graduate. Couple this policy with that of open enrolment and the implications for academic standards and quality become very “interesting” indeed.