Govt funding cuts to blame for losing learning opportunities

Tertiary Education Union
Media release
24 October 2012
Govt funding cuts to blame for losing learning opportunities

Several polytechnics are about to announce reviews that will see students lose foundation level courses and staff lose jobs.

The restructuring and cuts will follow the government’s decision in May this year to introduce competitive funding for level 1 and 2 courses, and then, through its Tertiary Education Commission, direct that funding away from publicly-owned polytechnics to cut-price providers and private companies. The commission’s own papers note that one of the criteria for deciding how it awarded funding was ‘value for money’ rather than the quality of the education on offer.

TEU president Sandra Grey says that the government is abandoning learners when they most need help.

"The government's policy is driving first-time learners, second-chance learners and people in regional communities out of our publicly-owned polytechnics where they have a clear pathway to life-long learning and job skills. It is asset stripping by another name, because the government is taking away the very thing which makes our public tertiary system so strong - its students and staff - and giving them away to private companies."

“This funding experiment is going horribly wrong. The Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce, needs to let people know when he will review this competitive funding experiment, and what criteria he will use measure this review,” said Sandra Grey.