Treasury misses the point of tertiary education

Media release
Tertiary Education Union - Te Hautū Kahurangi o Aotearoa
17 July 2013

Treasury misses the point of tertiary education

Treasury's bizarre working paper Private Returns to Tertiary Education, which it released yesterday, seems to argue that New Zealand should move from emulating equitable and economically successful countries like Sweden, Norway or Japan, to copy Portugal, Turkey and Hungary instead.

TEU national president Lesley Francey says instead of measuring the private benefits of tertiary education Treasury should measure the public benefits.

The paper, one of 12 that Treasury published yesterday, documents New Zealand's low rate of private return for tertiary education - that is people with a tertiary education earn more than people without a tertiary education but that gap is not as large as it is in most other OECD countries.

To prove its point Treasury publishes a graph showing New Zealand at one end of the spectrum with economically and socially successful countries Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Japan. It then proposes that New Zealand should abandon this end of the graph and head to join a different set of countries at the other end of the OECD - Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Portugal and Slovenia.

"No disrespect to any of those countries, but maybe more equitable pay is putting us in good economic company," says Lesley Francey.

"What Treasury's working paper actually shows is that New Zealand has comparatively low wages and salaries for all workers, including those with tertiary qualifications. The paper does not once mention the public benefits nations get from tertiary education. However, one that has been well documented in the past is that tertiary education helps create a more equal society where everyone benefits, including those who do not study."

ENDS