There's another important dimension to this ongoing mess which you haven't mentioned Grant, which is the gross over-investment by university administrators in buildings, an investment which bears no discernible relationship at the margin to university teaching and research quality - presumably the main system goals. Egregious example number 1 would be the living pa at Vic, which came in at nearly twice its budget at $61 million and at an eye-watering $20,000 per square metre. And it provided more student study space when such space already exists literally 100 metres away, in an under-utilised location once beloved of students called "the library". Apparently, according to https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/maori-at-victoria/marae/nga-whare/nga-mokopuna, "[t]he work to build the [living pa] project has not produced negative consequences for others". So no opportunity cost then in terms of the significant concomitant academic staff redundancies? I calculate Vic could have kept employed in the vicinity of 25 to 30 academic staff on the rate of return of that $61 million. Egregious example number 2 would be the $320 million spent on the Auckland University sports centre, a mere bagatelle cost-wise - compared to the living pa - at "only" $12,000 per square metre. Apparently, the university want to use it to "attract the All Blacks" (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/university-of-aucklands-new-320-million-sport-centre-aims-to-host-all-blacks/GMTCITIDOZH5TF3WCOQZU2TXRY/), which is of course the ultimate outcome sought by any sensible New Zealand university. And I won't get started on the Massey University Albany campus debacle. No-one involved with any of this shonky decision making has ever had to own the consequences of their actions, and that's the problem, right there.
Thank you for those examples, Simon. The fact that Massey failed to make a success of a campus in the midst of the country's fastest-growing middle-class population, where MoE could not build school classrooms fast enough, would beggar belief. But, as I was for a time on the MU Council, I'm unfortunately too well aware of the stupidity that went into this. I was once literally shouted down (openly in front of others) by one senior manager for suggesting that there were opportunities to make it work at Albany.
Well said Grant. Making academic staff redundant even though they still may teach hundreds of students per year, just so more money can be funneled back to the administrative "centre", is most certainly a thing happening right now in at least one of the institutions you mention above.
I sometimes wonder why I undertook my doctorate. It certainly isn’t valued here in New Zealand. Here, it’s not what you know, but who you know. Expertise is so yesterday. The great hope for the doctoral business programme was to install a conduit between business and research. It was a great idea. It woulda/coulda/shoulda have fuelled innovation and entrepreneurship, but the university bureaucracy couldn’t get out of its own way and many promises made were underfunded and never delivered. I’ll leave it there.
That said, as an Aussie, I’m incredibly thankful to New Zealand for my full scholarship to Otago. I loved my programme, the people around me were brilliant. My supervisors, brilliant, the DBA staff, exceptional. Ultimately, I benefited and I look forward to contributing to the Australian business sector when I get back. Cheers. Dr. James Wilkes 👍
A "housing market with bits tacked on" invests little or nothing in its own brainpower, meaning that much of said brainpower is only too happy to be better appreciated overseas.
Good critique that combined with the comments above pretty much nails it. While there is some essential work happening in university administration (e.g. librarians) the 60/40 ratio in favour of administrators is seriously annoying (and inefficient) as academics still have to do an enormous amount of administration of courses themselves.
Absolutely. Especially where "digital first" strategies exist and institutions can't decide whether the lecture is dead or whether to have rules about students ever setting foot on campus at all, ever.
A good start, Grant. B-. But you could have gone further with this analysis. Unless I’ve misread you, you seem to have overlooked the pachyderm in the room. Forcing universities to operate as businesses in a contrived marketplace for education has commodified learning, converting it from a value into a tool. Universities desperate to sell their product to stay afloat commercially will accept as students anyone with a credit card and a pulse. Post-graduate courses are now populated by students whose academic aptitude should have disqualified them from entry to undergraduate courses. Academics are obliged by their faculties to lower standards dramatically in order to pass these students. I recall failing overseas students in my 600-level course who resorted to plagiarism to compensate for their inability to grasp the concept of analysis. My HOD required me to pass them in order to protect the university’s reputation and lucrative income stream. Oh yes, and it was through my inadequacy as an academic that they failed. You see, making students pay tuition fees implies a contract of service. Failure to make the grade academically is now a failure of service. NZ’s tertiary education sector and academic standards have been royally prostituted by the political pimps of economic rationalism. How dumb is that?
Quite right, Basil. Increasing the proportion of the population who enter the system means bringing in less academically able students, and hence (inevitably) lowering standards, as people's jobs depend on keeping them in the system.
Great column Grant.
There's another important dimension to this ongoing mess which you haven't mentioned Grant, which is the gross over-investment by university administrators in buildings, an investment which bears no discernible relationship at the margin to university teaching and research quality - presumably the main system goals. Egregious example number 1 would be the living pa at Vic, which came in at nearly twice its budget at $61 million and at an eye-watering $20,000 per square metre. And it provided more student study space when such space already exists literally 100 metres away, in an under-utilised location once beloved of students called "the library". Apparently, according to https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/maori-at-victoria/marae/nga-whare/nga-mokopuna, "[t]he work to build the [living pa] project has not produced negative consequences for others". So no opportunity cost then in terms of the significant concomitant academic staff redundancies? I calculate Vic could have kept employed in the vicinity of 25 to 30 academic staff on the rate of return of that $61 million. Egregious example number 2 would be the $320 million spent on the Auckland University sports centre, a mere bagatelle cost-wise - compared to the living pa - at "only" $12,000 per square metre. Apparently, the university want to use it to "attract the All Blacks" (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/university-of-aucklands-new-320-million-sport-centre-aims-to-host-all-blacks/GMTCITIDOZH5TF3WCOQZU2TXRY/), which is of course the ultimate outcome sought by any sensible New Zealand university. And I won't get started on the Massey University Albany campus debacle. No-one involved with any of this shonky decision making has ever had to own the consequences of their actions, and that's the problem, right there.
Thank you for those examples, Simon. The fact that Massey failed to make a success of a campus in the midst of the country's fastest-growing middle-class population, where MoE could not build school classrooms fast enough, would beggar belief. But, as I was for a time on the MU Council, I'm unfortunately too well aware of the stupidity that went into this. I was once literally shouted down (openly in front of others) by one senior manager for suggesting that there were opportunities to make it work at Albany.
Well said Grant. Making academic staff redundant even though they still may teach hundreds of students per year, just so more money can be funneled back to the administrative "centre", is most certainly a thing happening right now in at least one of the institutions you mention above.
I sometimes wonder why I undertook my doctorate. It certainly isn’t valued here in New Zealand. Here, it’s not what you know, but who you know. Expertise is so yesterday. The great hope for the doctoral business programme was to install a conduit between business and research. It was a great idea. It woulda/coulda/shoulda have fuelled innovation and entrepreneurship, but the university bureaucracy couldn’t get out of its own way and many promises made were underfunded and never delivered. I’ll leave it there.
That said, as an Aussie, I’m incredibly thankful to New Zealand for my full scholarship to Otago. I loved my programme, the people around me were brilliant. My supervisors, brilliant, the DBA staff, exceptional. Ultimately, I benefited and I look forward to contributing to the Australian business sector when I get back. Cheers. Dr. James Wilkes 👍
A "housing market with bits tacked on" invests little or nothing in its own brainpower, meaning that much of said brainpower is only too happy to be better appreciated overseas.
Good critique that combined with the comments above pretty much nails it. While there is some essential work happening in university administration (e.g. librarians) the 60/40 ratio in favour of administrators is seriously annoying (and inefficient) as academics still have to do an enormous amount of administration of courses themselves.
Absolutely. Especially where "digital first" strategies exist and institutions can't decide whether the lecture is dead or whether to have rules about students ever setting foot on campus at all, ever.
A good start, Grant. B-. But you could have gone further with this analysis. Unless I’ve misread you, you seem to have overlooked the pachyderm in the room. Forcing universities to operate as businesses in a contrived marketplace for education has commodified learning, converting it from a value into a tool. Universities desperate to sell their product to stay afloat commercially will accept as students anyone with a credit card and a pulse. Post-graduate courses are now populated by students whose academic aptitude should have disqualified them from entry to undergraduate courses. Academics are obliged by their faculties to lower standards dramatically in order to pass these students. I recall failing overseas students in my 600-level course who resorted to plagiarism to compensate for their inability to grasp the concept of analysis. My HOD required me to pass them in order to protect the university’s reputation and lucrative income stream. Oh yes, and it was through my inadequacy as an academic that they failed. You see, making students pay tuition fees implies a contract of service. Failure to make the grade academically is now a failure of service. NZ’s tertiary education sector and academic standards have been royally prostituted by the political pimps of economic rationalism. How dumb is that?
Quite right, Basil. Increasing the proportion of the population who enter the system means bringing in less academically able students, and hence (inevitably) lowering standards, as people's jobs depend on keeping them in the system.