So who put the cap on?
August 29th, 2009 at 12:00 pm by David FarrarAt a time when unemployment is rising, Waikato University will next year be turning away people because of restrictions on student numbers, according to Labour Party leader Phil Goff.
Sounds awful doesn’t it. Then later on you read:
In 2007, the Tertiary Education Commission capped equivalent fulltime students at tertiary institutions until 2010.
Oh 2007. Wait, wait, who was the Government in 2007? No, no don’t tell me – let me guess.
August 29th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
As an Otago student, I’d have to say things are getting pretty awful if Waikato has to cap numbers! Who wouldn’t want to attend Margaret Wilsons fantasic 2.5/5 (cf. Otago 4.9/AK 4.8) Law School.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
You mean there is could be a reduction in the number of Graduates with a BSocSci degrees with a major in Gender studies?
How on earth will this country survive?
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Recession is generally a good time to give higher education a push. The caps are reviewable annually. I think they are a good method of getting rid of rubbish courses but we need to take care of good students who can’t progress in useful courses because the economic situation has increased demand. There is a compromise where the institution forgoes the taxpayer course subsidy but the students stay eligible for loans and allowances. Tolley has rejected that approach.
[DPF: It is unrealistic to expect the capped number to rise from the level set when the Govt had a multi-billion surplus, considering the Government is now facing a multi-billion deficit]
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
The guy is just a bloody idiot… he’s just a wooden talking head never quite managing to connect the dots. Of course we can always rely on the media to miss the stunningly obvious and give his waffle plenty of exposure without analysis or background. That’s the only reason Liabour haven’t slipped down to single digits in the polls.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
“Recession is generally a good time to give higher education a push.”
So push it. With your own money commie, not mine.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I agree with Andrei here. What’s needed is to chop useless degrees or even better chop off useless departments. Since, we’re a small country; we should focus more on science & technology and less emphasis on useless departments as sociology, pacific studies, anthropology, some useless psychology courses (psych is still useful though) and others. The smallest and top technology institute in the world, Caltech (actually, they’re a university, but name-label doesn’t matter to them), manage to do that exactly. The number of students is about 2000 total and their research work including the courses they teach is undisputedly a world class. They don’t teach useless subjects or causes and there is no surprise that Nobel Prizes in economics, medicine, physics and chemistry have gone to Caltech over the years. They have always featured in the top 5 or top 10 in the ranking of tertiary institutions/universities for as long as I can remember. Caltech also manages NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) (rocket and space-exploration research facility)
David Farrar blogged the other day on a new research by Canterbury University psychologist Natalie Blackmore who found that 57.58 per cent of men and 42.26 per cent of women students reported self-induced vomiting after drinking alcohol. What a fucking useless research and waste of taxpayer’s money. I frequently talked to researchers (both PhD students and post-doc students) at the Auckland University School of Engineering when I am around in that library for my weekly trip there , where they say, that some of the topics that they wanted to conduct research on, have to be frequently canned , because of the severe research funding cut. This is where funds should be pouring into and not some useless drinking vomit study (or thousands of other useless research like that).
The government should act now to chop useless departments and useless courses from our universities and that money should be diverted to useful researches in science & technology.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
should be stated as:
…teach useless subjects or courses…
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
My memory is that in 1969 (when I graduated) there were about 15,000 tertiary students in a general population of about 2 million. That is, a ration of 7.5/ 1,000. Today there are how many tertiary students? I’m not sure but I’d guess at 150,000 students in a general population of $4 million. That’s a ratio of 37.5 / 1,000
There’s your problem Mr Mallard. We are squandering billions of dollars providing university courses for far two many dumb arses who should be out doing productive and useful work instead. Like grubbing gorse off the hills behind Wainuiomata.
Cut the ratio back to 20 / 1,000 and we still would be punching above our weight, I’ll bet.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
As an aside, it is however, much more costly to teach science based courses. Science courses require supporting labs (those chemicals and equipment don’t come cheap). Supporting labs also require additional staff to run the labs and make sure the chemistry students don’t steal the 100% ethanol for ornage punch.
The hidden peril of academic life is the explosion of administrative tasks in the last 10 years. The Times Higher Educatin Supplement reported recently that in the UK, academics now spend 50% of their time on admin. 20 years ago that was about 10%.
I don’t think NZ academics are immune to that trend. Technology now means you are required to supply more information, more regularly and in more depth to everybody up the food chain. Where in the past, you would get one memo every week or two, slowly winding its way physically through people’s mail slots, now you get multiple memos a day via email and requests for much more information.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/2813280/Canterbury-University-under-performers-told-to-leave
Not before time.
Canterbury University under-performers told to leave
By REBECCA TODD – The Press
Last updated 05:00 29/08/2009
Canterbury University excluded nearly 200 failing students in the first half of this year as it looks to rid itself of under-performers.
By the end of the first semester, 1371 cases of failing students had been reviewed, 759 warning letters sent out and 181 students excluded from their faculty or qualification and 14 from the university.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
The reason the left don’t like student cutbacks is that most of the dumbarses at Uni are recruited or seduced by left wing propaganda.
Keep the stupid out of university and the left’s vote would drop by a third or more.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
It’s a lot harder to get a job without a degree these days… The marketplace is very clear that a good salary requires a degree. Students are just following…
Who’s going to pay people to do that?
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Trevor Mallard.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Repton, do you seriously believe that? I don’t see many electricians or plumbers with degrees. Or truck drivers or parking wardens. We are wasting money trying to turn numskulls and fuckwits into people of letters. All we have achieved is to downgrade the value of a degree to the stage where the lowliest shit kicker needs to possess a B Arts but is unable to read write or count properly and speaks some unintelligible lingo previously reserved for air traffic controllers..
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Adolf – not too long ago there were redundant graduates in skilled vocational areas delivering letters and driving buses (I went to such a bus driver’s funeral and met a similarly placed mailman there). Meanwhile there was a glut of white South Africans coming into NZ with similar qualifications (those with South African backgrounds being favoured for supervisory and management jobs over Kiwis).
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
A global financial crisis is an obvious time to review policy. The Government did review tertiary policy, and chose to cut scholarships and staff funding. So the Government did take action in response to the crisis – but their action was to cut. National own this policy, and they own this problem. To pin it on Labour this far out, after National have already made major policy changes, is pretty lame.
At the very least, National could remove the Muldoonist price controls on the University sector. If they don’t want to support it further, they should let it compete fairly. There are no price controls on Caltech, Falafulu ! And no price controls on International students. So universities will turn away local students, and accept international students instead.
I reckon every qualified local who doesn’t get a place – effectively losing it to an Malaysian or Vietnamese student, will cost the government three votes. Worse, they will help to motivate a higher turnout from Labour supporters at the next election.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Adolf, you are completely correct in that degrees in “gender studies”, and the like are useless; however I am aware of several employers (including government owned agencies) who do an initial filtration of job applicants by degree. No degree=immediately eliminated. They don’t even care what the degree is, but claim they get so many job applications that they need some way to whittle the numbers down. Naturally I think these employers are ‘tards, however what repton describes does happen to a certain extent.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
The deluded Mallard trying to rewrite history. This confused Labour MP is advised to serve his electorate better instead of wasting time writing inanities and half-truths.
Quickly, get some hints from the headmistress in New York, since nobody pays any attention to Goff.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
In 2007, the Tertiary Education Commission capped equivalent fulltime students at tertiary institutions until 2010.
So it must be changed soon…
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
There’s no shortage of money in the tertiary education system. What there is, is an excess of waste. Evidence:
1. Too many providers relative to the population. A country of 4 million does not require 8 universities and 20-odd polytechs. Serious rationalisation by forced merger is long overdue and is now urgent. The Aussies did it in 1992 – now’s NZ’s turn.
2. Each of these providers has a top-heavy, overpaid bureaucracy whose only main purpose is to create work for itself. For example, how does a low-ranking regional polytech [Nelson] justify having a bloated “human resources” department, a six-figure salary “director of teaching and learning”, and jobs like [you can't make this shit up] a “learning journey manager”? Now multiply this sort of bullshit by the numbers mentioned in 1. above.
3. A fixation with spending money on grandiose, multi-million dollar buildings that suck even more money out of the operating budget [and away from frontline delivery] in depreciation charges, heating, cleaning and maintenance. Now multiply this sort of bullshit by the numbers mentioned in 1. above.
4. Proliferation of Mickey Mouse courses for all manner of wannabe dropkicks that do not lead to economically useful outcomes. Other posters have referred to this at length, but I know of degreed individuals employed as retail sales clerks – the sort of jobs they had before they got their degrees. Madness! Nevertheless Nelson’s polytech, for example, plans to spend millions on a “visual arts” building – to turn out no-hoper paint daubers who, statistically, will never achieve professional success in the arts world but who will return to their previous lives as retail clerks and benefit recipients.
5. Bogus academic “research”. An article of faith in NZ’s degree sector is that academic “research” is a required, measurable “output”. Under this metric volume and speed are everything and quality is meaningless. Derivative ideas are thus recycled to the max – even straight-from-textbook student “research assignments” are feverishly mined for ” “joint conference papers” and “co-authored publishing opportunities”. And tertiary institutions of all colours make funds available to support the generation of this useless avalanche of dross.
6. To make ends meet and pull a swifty on Cullen’s enrolment cap, tertiary providers resort of fee farming international students from chiefly China and more recently, the hitherto untilled virgin soil of India. The fact that most of these students arrive in NZ poorly prepared to meet even NZ’s relaxed academic standards worries the administration block bureaucrats and senior “executives” not at all. Sign ‘em up, take their money, and keep the pipeline pumpin’! [By the way, Indian students are not in NZ for any other reason than to get a shot at winning permanent residence.]
7. Bogus research projects. Other posters have referred to this [e.g. vomiting and drinking studies] But here’s another one: the Nelson polytech has $500,000 of taxpayers’ money to do research into – wait for it – Second Life. That’s right the silly computer world where I’m lead to believe nerds and now-grown-up Warhammer nutters go to engage in vicarious sex and sex-chat. Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.
NZ’s tertiary sector is Augean Stable. Where is Hercules?
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Joanne Black highlighted in her recent Listener article about ridiculous degrees.
To a ridiculous degree
Guess, who started this program? Yep, Trevor Mallard when he was Minister of Education during the Labour government.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
The chicken or the egg, which came first? If there were not so many graduates about it would be easier to get a job without a degree. I guess Goff hopes that folk have short memories, David is one who doesn’t, good on you DPF.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
BTW is the same guy going to take the principled Key approach and rule out working with Winston in 2011?
or is Goff going to take the Clark approach and turn the other way for a sniff of power?
Over to you Phil…
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Slightlyrighty
s an Otago student, I’d have to say things are getting pretty awful if Waikato has to cap numbers! Who wouldn’t want to attend Margaret Wilsons fantasic 2.5/5 (cf. Otago 4.9/AK 4.8) Law School.
Yes slightly-righty, you are clearly one of those ignorant snobs. I am a Waikato student, I’m a Tory, and I’m proud to go to a university right in the middle of National Party heartland. I’m proud to go to a law school whose last dean was one of the top commerical lawyers in London and UK before he left to come here and take up the deanship, which has given the school a far more commerical and jurisprudential focus than it ever had before. I’m proud to go to a law school that didn’t give Helen Clark an honorary doctorate. I’m glad my law school isn’t in the reddest city in the country. And just so you’re aware, Margaret Wilson did not ‘start’ the law school. She was only a prominent name attached to it. It was started by the big commerical law firms in Hamilton and the Waikato/BOP District Law Soc who wanted a law school in Hamilton so they could get more graduates into the Waikato-Bay of Plenty. Since MW went to Parliament, that has been its focus.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Are the number of citings of the research factored in?
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
When I left school in 1980 most of my peers went straight into the workforce doing either apprenticeships, cadetships or the like. The only people who went to university were the ones who wanted professional careers or those who came from academic backgrounds. Today university is just an extension of high school. Standards have dropped immensely and a degree is now a prerequisite in gaining a job interview whereas in my day it wasn’t. Your School C marks gave employers a good indication of your prospective ability. In 2007 aged 44 I enrolled fulltime at university for the first time. Honestly I was absolutely shocked at how poor the standards of students were at university. Half of the Kiwi students should not be there along with 75% of the international students. The international students now hold the universities to ransom with the financial viability of most universities being dependent upon the large fees that they pay (70% of the students on my campus were internationals). So what does this mean? Lecturers who are dependent on employment from the international students are very reluctant to fail them and will do everything in their capabilities to make sure they pass (and so stay employed). So university standards have obviously dropped and some of the experienced lecturers that I have spoken to privately bemoan the way things have headed. Where once they enjoyed reading and marking most assignments that showed insight and thought and were well written, now for most of the assignments they have to try and decipher what is meant, correct atrocious grammar and constantly check for plagiarism which is absolutely rife. The universities are now big business for New Zealand where academic standards have sadly been compromised for the sake of international funds and the notion that higher education in New Zealand is everybody’s birthright.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
the whole business of education went nutz over the past decade in line with the economy….. I mean for fucks sake, how many scuba diving instructors is NZ pumping out each year verses how many NZ or globally are needed?
You see the masses believe that a tertiary education can teach you talent! BS it can, it can teach you skills and knowledge, of which are transferable, but talent isnt…..
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Given the conversation had one day with Goff I think that its safe to say he will never accommodate Winston in anything.
Vote:Actually I doubt anyone but the lady with zimmer frame and Brendon Horan will either.
August 29th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Whafe – education is a business now, bums on seats, money in the bank. It seems nobody cares how many pilots and scuba divers we have. What about philosophers? How the fuck can someone teach you philosophy? They have doctorates in it!!
Vote:Someone said earlier, we mainly need the sciences and engineering. We are manufacturing less and less so apart from the trades and services which support society we don’t have too many vacancies do we? Oh yeah, I forgot, Gummint and local council jobs have filled the gap……..
August 29th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Hear ya kaya……. The whole population wants to be rocket scientists, no can do, we need people whom are happy to clean the shitters, not downing anyone, but that is a fact….
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Never one to adjust policies to suit circumstances… compare NZ’s approach to Australia’s for a moment. Labor governments in Australia are increasing training across the board including uncapping tertiary enrolments and investing heavily in vocaitonal education and training (whereas National’s not increased funding for ITOs). Lets see which works best shall we.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
I just saw an ad on telly for a Bachelor of Contemporary Music
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Okay you believers in “freedom”, let’s get this right. You want to dictate what universities teach, and maintain Muldoonist price controls on the sector? What was it you professed to believe in again? Because this freedom and market thing sounds more and more like a front. The test of intellectual honesty is whether you stick to your views when it is hard to do so.
Fail.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Does Auckland University really need an ethnomusicology subject?
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Vibenna,
And you display the standard low IQ mistake many leftists make. You are confusing a free market with a market free of criticism. Some people believe the market for arts degrees is inefficient. The benefit of capitilism is that it allows inefficient industries to fail. Free speech allows people with that view to communicate it to others before that failure occurs.
Fail.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Who REALLY wants to attend this wretched place.
After Tangata Whenua indoctrination courses an intimidating Maori entrance and entrances, de rigeur staying at a first year hostel which is Maorified and asks demands hand wringing complaisance to Maori Culture, a stone age “culture” which did not know the wheel nor writing and seems to be added to along the way with made up yarns. These thing seem to get sanctified at will.
Vote:I see the place as strongly tied to radical feminism in course compositions and ideals infiltrated with Maori radical ambitions all tied up in a parccel by the unlovable Margaret Wilson with her wretched socialist Labour Party ideals.
The law course seems to ,be married to legally righting Maori rights or wrongs and Waikato graduates are automatically struck off many job prospects when their law degree origins are stated. Anyhow the maori grievance gravy train is soon coming to the end of its journey so that fiscal milking cow will soon die.Much better to get an Auckland ,Vic or Otago degree. All are non bullshit qualifications and work well.
Pity the poor staff at Waikato when they come to try and teach something worthwhile and have to rock backward and forward saying “Kia Ora” and any other syncophantically suitable things to appear to being “culturally aware” or “culturally Safe’ when they feel like screaming. What a load of bullshit wretched place Waikato is. . And of course the good old slow march powhiris soaking up otherwise useful time. .But the poor buggers have to go along with it to keep their jobs and lose their pride in the process. That bloody Ms Margaret Wilson has a lot to answer for!
I shivver at the prospect of ever going to Ms Wilsons establishment and realise how lucky I was to have gone to Otago even tho it meant the long journey down there and back from Whangarei. Apolitical at Otago great minds and great beer, Speights.
August 29th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Too much fiddling with the plumbing here.
NZ’s tertiary sector needs top to bottom rationalisation to reduce the number of providers from nearly 30 down to around two universities and three polytechs – that’s all that is needed for a 4 million population.
Since each provider is currently a fixed cost monster with duplicated governing councils, “management”, administrative bureaucracies, academic programmes and facilities; setting in place a wholesale rationalisation in the sector would generate truly massive cost savings. These economies would, I believe, actually work to create more educational opportunites for students – they would certainly translate into more resources being available for frontline teaching delivery of better crafted and balanced programmes.
At midnight existing independent providers should simply become branch campuses [campii?] of parent organisations who take responsibility for centralised administration [payroll, IT, governance, curriculum development etc.] and they are to be run on a day to day basis by campus managers. Away go all the current six-figure CEOs, marketing directors, finance departments, HR country clubs, “quality” pencil pushers, and such ilk. If rationalisation can be done for Auckland local government, it can and should be applied to the tertiary sector – with definitely better probabilities of success too.
Stephen: No – volume of independent citation of research output [the one genuine metric of the true merit of any published research] is not applied as a front and centre criteria in NZ. Simple volume of output of worthless published dysentry is what counts in its stead.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Paul,
Training does not do anything for the economy.
Jobs help the economy.
Some jobs require training.
Training is only useful if it leads to a productive job.
Our training must predict the jobs we will need filled in the years to come, ie. tradesmen, engineers, scientists.
Vote:All those people doing courses with low productivity jobs awaiting them are wasting their time and our money.
Sending more and more people into training is wasteful unless they have jobs requiring that training waiting for them.
August 29th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
The only NZ University that is featured in the top 100 from the 2008 QS World University Rankings is University of Auckland at number 65. I think that Auckland should axe useless unit such as Centre for Pacific Studies and other similar departments and improve the quality of courses they teach and may be their ranking will climb up to the top 15 or at best be in the top 10, over the next decade or so.
I know some students who are majoring in Pacific studies (some of them are my relatives) for their BA. I have asked some of them in the past, why on earth do they want to study something useless like that since they already speak Tongan perfectly and not only that, they already know the culture. The answer was always, because it is easy to gain credits for my BA degree in doing those papers . I also asked, yeah , but what you gonna do with that once you completed your study?, and the answer came, hopefully, I can get a job, just for having a BA degree. I replied, but you’re more likely to get a toilet cleaning job at McDonald, with that BA degree majoring in Pacific Study, than any employer out there who would be keen to offer you some meaningful employment opportunities.
I believe that vocational training should be well funded because our economy depends on skilled people from those trainings, but that has to be achieved via chopping useless courses at University and divert those resources to vocational trainings. We don’t need useless qualifications in Pacific Studies, however our economy needs to fund vocational training for people doing apprenticeships. I can’t see why our politicians are so blind to this fact. They see that Pacific Studies as something useful (with their no objection to their existence), but they don’t see that apprenticeship training is the one that is really useful, which is currently being ignored.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
I’m not arguing against education, my point is you can give everybody in the country a degree but what the fuck are they all going to do? We need to focus on finding ways to utilise our talents and resources so we are competitive with other countries. We need to maximise the value of our resources and make sure people have the skills needed to do this.
You can have all the BA’s in the world but even the jobs in Government and local body bureaucracy can only suck up so many of the wasters.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Agreed – too many bullshit pop courses stuffed with soft credits that generate measurable benefit to no one other than stroking the egos of those dumb and lazy enough to take them. By all means provide such conceits, but let their fees charged on a zero-subsidy and fully costed basis. If someone with too much money and not enough sense wants to take some prolonged adolescent wank like sociology or gender studies – well them do so at full eye-watering whack.
In addition, there is an urgent need to introduce rigorous up-or-out academic achievement standards for undergraduates. Tighten up on entry requirements – especially in the “mature open entry” field where, at present, anyone aged over [from memory] 25 is admitted regardless of their ability or prior knowledge. At the same time, students who fail to achieve a stipulated number of passes within a defined time frame either get a gypsy’s warning and put on academic probation if their performance is marginal or they get the order of the push and are kicked out if their inability to achieve is dire [e.g. failure of all their courses in a semester].
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
There’s no use for people to be earning degrees (useful in the real world of not) and coming out with a huge loan they owe the country and no jobs available to start a career, because that’s the situation now. The majority of people going for jobs like store cleaning are university graduates.
More emphasis on creating jobs for people who have qualifications in areas we need, have proven productive and want to get ahead in life. Less emphasis on worthless qualifications in the name of political correctness. Less emphasis on throwing money at unproductive bludgers hoping they one day see the ‘light’ and actually want to contribute to the growth of this nation.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Declaration – I work in the tertiary sector.
What intrigues me is that, in that in this raft of criticism, it is clear that nobody has any idea of the actual quality of New Zealand universities, as measured by scientific output, citation rates, rankings (NZ has three in the top 500) and accreditation (business schools are particularly strong by international standards). I’m also amused at the claim that New Zealand has too many Universities. How many does Melbourne have? Sydney? Singapore? Most of these anti-intellectual arguments wouldn’t survive even a nodding acquaintance with the facts.
And I repeat my call – let Universities charge what they want. Or let students have tertiary education vouchers! And support a bit of academic freedom. Our society was built on academic freedom and the accomplishments of universities. Who do you think provided the basis for the computers you are all using? Philosophers !
And if you believe in the market – call for the removal of the Muldoonist price controls on University fees.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Correction: in the ranking list Falafulu links to, New Zealand has 6 in the top 400. Quite amazingly good really.
Correction 2: and Flashman is completely wrong about citation rates. These are published, and NZ has (from memory) 0.44% of the world’s scientific citations, which is a very impressive performance for our size.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
New Zealand universities can be brilliant relative to others but it still doesn’t answer the philosophical question, what are all the graduate BA’s we keep churning out going to do?
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
kaya – part of the answer can be found in the New Zealand Vice Chancellor’s graduate destination survey:
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/st_services/careers/resources/degree_options/graduate_destinations/index.aspx
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Thats a completely useless link vibenna, it has no numbers.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Vibenna said…
let Universities charge what they want. Or let students have tertiary education vouchers! And support a bit of academic freedom.
I believe in free market, so why don’t we privatize our universities and they would be free to pick and choose, even if they teach useless courses, at least the taxpayer isn’t responsible for what they choose to teach. I prefer it this way, but that is a call that won’t be acceptable to the NZ population.
Vibenna said…
Who do you think provided the basis for the computers you are all using? Philosophers !
I know that answer, but I am pretty much sure that it didn’t originate from some researches in sociology, anthropology, pacific studies , etc,…
I am a supporter of University education and higher learning, but I am not a supporter of including/teaching useless courses at our Universities, which is really a waste of taxpayer dollar. Our Universities should emphasize quality over size, concentrating on a core of academic disciplines of very high caliber similar to what what Caltech is doing. University is important for the advancement of civilization and society, but it shouldn’t dumb itself down in order to compete for student numbers. I, myself do use University (Engineering) library a lot, where I visit there once a week and spend at most 3 hours going thru the various new journals on display, that arrive weekly and take note of any new research topic that may be useful for my own work. Without these research journals (computing, economics/finance, mathematics, engineering, science), I wouldn’t be able to do what I am currently doing. University is important, and don’t me wrong, but I don’t support wasting useful resources that could have been diverted to other research domains which are desperately needed there.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Zero income tax. Fund primary and secondary education with GST. Tertiary education can be paid with loans by the students
You need to allow people to see clearly the costs and benefits of their actions. If it’s going to cost someone $30000 for BA in communication leading to a job at McDonalds they may not be so keen of course someone may not be keen to stump up $60000 or $80000 for a science degree either but as China is pumping them out we could import them from there or anywhere else that the state subsidise their education. A zero income tax would be a great incentive to capture these migrants
To be brutal we may not even need more than one or two universities if we are clever, we just need to create an environment that can churn young graduates from around the world.
With low company tax, no income tax, simple immigration and research rules we could become a research centre for little outlay.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 12:01 am
And then what does the rest of the population do for a living, go on a benefit? We lose more productive jobs than we create every year. Something’s got to give. Educating everyone up to degree standard isn’t the answer unless they can all find jobs that produce a product or service that people want to buy or trade for.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Falufu: the problem is, recognizing what is useless. And Herman Poole – you have a fair point.
Actually, I think the Aussies do all this better than us. They have serious metrics around graduate destinations, starting salaries, perceptions of graduate skills and the rest. New Zealand could do a lot better by properly evaluating the outcomes of the various degrees, and then by all means let the weak ones die (get withdrawn). A bit of creative destruction never hurt anybody …
That is what Anne Tolley should be doing, in IMHO. But I wouldn’t want to predict the weak degrees without having pretty hard data.
She could also work to improve the graduating cohort evaluations done by the New Zealand Vice Chancellor’s committee. At the moment, they are all over the place, and weak as water. I wonder whether any new degree has ever had a negative evaluation, and been forced to be withdrawn by the NZVCC? If I was in her office, I would be asking that question.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 2:28 am
Excellent points. I would further add that in order for the free market to function effectively, there must be good customer knowledge; as such it is mandantory for people to be able to speak their mind on the employment prospects of various degrees. Vibenna’s suggestion that people should not be critical of “useless” degrees is actually an attempt to distort the free market that he/she claims to endorse.
LOL its interesting to look at why NZ universities rank fairly high overall. One factor that is considered (and we always do well in) is number of international students. Yes thats right, a significant part of the ranking comes from how many international students one can pull in. Presumably they think if you can make all these people go overseas just to attend your uni, you have to be good. Unfortunately we admit just about anybody and all but gurantee them a degree, so while our universities appear good on the ratings they are actually mediocre.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Vibenna – re research citation rate.
I’m quite aware that this statistic is published thanks very muchly. But research citation [particularly at the international level] is not commonly used as a direct performance metric for 99.99% of NZ’s academics, the “work” they “publish” or for obtaining the soft-money, taxpayer funded “research” grants they pursue so assiduously.
100 grand for a NZ student drunken vomiting research project anyone?
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Paradigm – too right.
International students are prized as lucrative, high volume cashcows by NZ’s tertiary providers. Come one, come all: as long as your daddies’ cheques clear Ms Huang and Mr Singh we don’t really give a shit. Sorry we haven’t got around to organising accommodation for you like we promised, but until we do you can doss down on mattresses in the student hostel. And before you ask. No – we won’t be offering any rebate on your fees.
Think on this: If NZ providers were concerned with attracting top shelf international students, they’d all make at least some nominal effort to offer generous scholarships to high potential Slumdog Einsteins and Paddyfield Nashes [Yes - they exist in tens of thousands] but they don’t. Funny that.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Vibenna says:
And there, folks, is our problem. Dewy-eyed detatchment syndrome but education insiders.
That same peer-reviewed survey has Australia showing 5 in the top 50.
But hey, if benchmarking ourselves with Equatorial Guinea spins your wheels then who am I to deny you that pleasure.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 10:41 am
What real point is there of pushing more students through the university system when the degrees are worthless anyway? Ask most graduates what they think of their degrees these days. They simply for the most part, aren’t worth the $30k loan. There is already a glut of graduates who can’t find jobs, why increase debt and lower the standards by letting more in? I really can’t understand this country. Tighten up university education, let less students in, and increase the quality of graduates. At the moment its just a degree printing machine.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 11:20 am
There’s one lot of degree’s that is overwhelming us and that we could mostly do without. Wraps around Psychology and Social things. These are the useless, mind destroyed fat screwed up women that do degrees to join CYPS. Just so they can come back to bother us all now we are all criminals by default because we raise OUR KIDS our way.
And don’t tell me off cause I see them constantly and they fit exactly that description.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 11:43 am
It’s always amusing seeing people attack a straw man. But let me ask two key questions.
1 – For those of you claiming NZ Universities are not good, what evidence would you accept to disprove your allegation? Is there any conceivable evidence at all?
2 – For those of you claiming to believe in the market. Why do you refuse to criticize the government’s muldoonist price controls on the University sector? Why not let Universities charge what they like, and accept full fee-paying domestic students?
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Flashman said…
If NZ providers were concerned with attracting top shelf international students,
NZ providers are concerned primarily with attracting internationals students purely for numbers including their cash. Top students won’t come here. Why would they come here, when they can be offered places by those high ranking Universities in the US or Europe? We accept international students for their money. An exception here is that some top international students (very small number) do come here because of the excellent international reputations of some certain academic staffs, in which they want to study under their supervisions. For example, Prof. John Butcher from the Math Dept. at University of Auckland, had taken many top overseas students from Europe, US, Asia, Middle East, South America over the years and the main reason for those students in choosing to come to Auckland to do PhD/post-doc in Math is because of the name John Butcher (a legendary internationally recognized research mathematician). The name University of Auckland is perhaps not that important to them. I think that this applies across the academic spectrum (ie, highly regarded researchers from other disciplines do attract top international students because of their international standing but not because they’re from University of Auckland, Otago, Victoria, etc,…).
I also believe that international students (not top ones) do come to NZ simply because we (NZ Universities) rank higher than most Universities in their own countries. The top students from Asia do flock mostly to the US in massive numbers, to attend Stanford, Havard, MIT, CMU, Berkeley, etc… I think that only the average students (with cash) and perhaps a few top ones that do come to NZ from Asia to study. Some or should I say that the same apply to us, where most or all of our top students do move overseas as well to continue there, mainly because their type of research can’t be done locally, either is it undoable or not sufficient funding, etc,…
I think that if we (NZ Universities) rand in the top 30 or even better, the top 20, then we will see top international students of high caliber come in massive numbers to study here. This is why I believe that may be 1 or perhaps 2 of our Universities should be downsized, ie, axe useless departments & courses that offer little value for the taxpayer dollar and then remake those 2 into a Caltech-type research-driven institution, ie, useful research but not useless research such as the following one from a sociologist ,
Is Marc Ellis a ‘new lad’ or old sexist? (Dr. Toni Bruce – University of Waikato).
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August 30th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
vibenna, are you suggesting that there are no useless courses being taught at our universities? If you can’t see that there are useless departments and useless courses, then I am afraid it’s gonna be very hard to convince you otherwise . May be the main reason is because you’re inside the circle that you’re predisposed not to see anything wrong with teaching questionable courses since any new courses that are being invented for inclusion in the curriculum must always be right and appropriate (since it’s universities , we know the universe ) regardless of how outsiders (like myself) may see it?
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Falafulu – there are certainly poor performing courses and degrees. But I don’t think that they are necessarily in the areas people think. While some ‘arts’ courses might be unpopular on this blog, they might actually be doing a great job in developing students’ thinking and getting them jobs. It is quite possible, for example, that employment outcomes are better, and life impact greater, for History degrees than Sports degrees or Tourism degrees.
My evaluation of degree programs (and majors) would be based on:
- Student Demand
- Graduate Employment rate
- Achievement of learning goals (such as writing, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, technical knowledge)
- Alumni achievements
- Qualifications and reputation of the staff
Individual subjects are a bit trickier. University is supposed to be a mind-opening experience. So I think the key guides are (i) how it fits into the Institution’s strategy, (ii) how important it is to the relevant degrees (iii) whether it is economic to run. I don’t feel qualified to make micro judgements about particular subjects. If there are high quality staff teaching an economically viable program whose graduates are high quality – then fine by me. But I agree that this evaluation is lacking in many New Zealand institutions.
So by all means get rid of some subjects and degrees. Just make sure they are the right ones, based on evidence.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Falafulu Fisi,
I would add that one of the main reasons the quality of research is lacking in NZ is the funding. The way NZ universities pay bills is by student numbers (particularly, as we have already discussed, of the overseas variety). While i’d really like a research oriented uni, we don’t have the money put in for it, and unless you increase the likes of the Marsden Fund by a couple of orders of magnitude you won’t get it. And I don’t see enough money lying around during a recession to go anywhere near that.
This is also another reason they don’t slash useless departments, the more useless a department is, the less its running costs tend to be and the easier it is for people to pass. Low running costs plus easy to pass attracts students and = profit.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
But instead of spending $100,000 on a degree you can just go to the library and read a book and with the internet esp it is very easy to find people to have a conversation with. That’s how people learn about the world for the 70 years they don’t spend at Uni.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
vibenna @ 11:43. Reasonable questions. I’d like to reply now, but have to drop offline. Will respond in next 24hrs. Just for the record #2 – I agree!
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
“Adolf Fiinkensein
My memory is that in 1969 (when I graduated) there were about 15,000 tertiary students in a general population of about 2 million. That is, a ration of 7.5/ 1,000. Today there are how many tertiary students? I’m not sure but I’d guess at 150,000 students in a general population of $4 million. That’s a ratio of 37.5 / 1,000
There’s your problem Mr Mallard…”
Outraged over the number you just plucked out of your arse? Hilarious.
Falafulu Fisi, I don’t think anyone is 1 bit surprised that you study engineering.
“kaya
What about philosophers? How the fuck can someone teach you philosophy? They have doctorates in it!!”
You would be surprised how valuable a philosophy degree is.
Anyway, off you lot go, continue trying to pull the ladder up behind you, its ever so predictable.
Vote:August 30th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Earlier in the day Vibenna asked:
Check out this: http://i28.tinypic.com/2zdn62v.jpg.
We supply education to a global market (either kiwi’s who are mobile after gaining quals, or providing uni study for foreign fee-paying students). I’d expect that our rankings would be at least consistent or improving over time if we were to brand our universities ‘good’. While the chart provides some evidence of this, there’s more evidence of a gradual decline in the rankings of kiwi universities.
If any NZer is happy with these figures then I’d suggest that they are satisfied with mediocrity. And that’s problem.
Vote:August 31st, 2009 at 2:56 am
The underlying principles of physics, mathematics, computing (mathematical logic) which are the cornerstones of modern day technology are driven by philosophy. Without philosophy , then the advancement of those core disciplines would be slow, so philosophy is a very important part of University learning. Much of modern physics were purely invented via philosophical methods. Einstein invented general relativity by pure applications of thought experiment via formulations of axioms and putting forward postulations, without evidence that such laws exist in nature, because he didn’t base his derivation on observed data at all, just postulations from his head (ie, he was using philosophical principles to derive his work). The same as the formulations of quantum mechanics by it founders. They started with 3 main axioms and then everything we know today all traced back to those 3. Mathematics is the same, you use inductions , deductions and abductions to prove if a proposition is valid.
Philosophy is not just useful, it is FUNDAMENTAL because physics, mathematics and computing sits on top of philosophy.
Now to job creation. We need to look no further than the success of Silicon Valley in the US which it has always been driven mainly by the success of higher eduction. Its birth started by 3 doctorates (PhD) physicists, John Bardeen(Wisconsin/Princeton) , William Shockley(Caltech/MIT) and Walter Brattain (Oregon/Minnesota) invented the silicon-based transistor in the mid-1950s. That lead to the birth of the Valley and the emergence of modern corporations as Intel and others in the 1950s & 1960s. These industries then drove the demands for graduates, thus creating booms. Other high tech industries emerged in the Valley too indirectly as a result of the existence of those heavy weights microelectronics manufacturers, such as the computing industries & telecommunications, since the hardware that were needed for gadgets in those industries used semiconductor devices. So, the boom in one sector of the industry indirectly creates a boom in other related industries, and hence the demand for graduates to fulfill those job vacancies during boom time increased. Not only engineers/scientists were in high demand but also graduates from humanity courses , since they were needed to run various tasks in the office including marketings, etc,…
That’s why it is very important to have a high quality research-driven culture within our universities. We don’t have unlimited funding therefore, questionable courses should be canned and divert that money into useful projects.
Vote:August 31st, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Getstaffed – sure, I agree that there has been slight decline, and that is not good. But to keep it in context, those Aussie universities are the best of their 38 or so universities.
Falafulu – I agree with that as well, but would want to be very careful about picking losers. Also, it is a community of knowledge workers, and it is important to act in a way that respects that community. Chop wildly and you run the risk of alienating the people you want to keep.
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