THE SECRET of Steven Joyce’s success lies in his unparalleled ability to make the status quo sound plausible. His latest policy initiative – reducing the size and representativeness of university and wananga councils – is presented as introducing the benefits of efficient and effective corporate governance to a privileged clutch of old-fashioned and top-heavy educational institutions.
The Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment has a shrewd enough grasp of the New Zealand character to know that no serious political harm will come to any government willing to put the boot into academia. New Zealanders do not admire intellectuals and they positively despise academics. The transformation of New Zealand’s universities, from bastions of elitism to vast vocational training facilities, was undertaken with surprisingly little public fuss.
As a nation of practical “doers” the idea of subsidising abstract and critical “thinkers” has always been a hard sell. Joyce exploits this anti-intellectual tradition with considerable skill. In his latest media release, for example, he assures the voters that:
“The governance reforms will support universities and wānanga in their drive to be more responsive to the needs of their students.”
No nonsense here about universities being the “critic and conscience” of our society, but a strong emphasis on the National-led Government’s role in improving their “performance”:
“The Government has made a series of changes, including initiatives like Performance-Linked Funding and the new Education Performance Indicators, which are helping to lift the performance of all institutions in the sector.
“This approach has resulted in significant improvements in performance and a system that is delivering more graduates than ever before. In 2012, a total of 162,000 qualifications were completed in the New Zealand tertiary education system – up 23 per cent from 2008.”
Joyce “gets”, in a way those on the left of politics do not, that middle-class New Zealanders enjoy a love/hate relationship with higher education.
The middle classes understand the central importance of providing their children with the qualifications necessary to maintain (and hopefully improve) their socio-economic status. But their own student years warn them that too much intellectual stimulation can be dangerous. Many recall the tremendous feelings of wonder and exhilaration that accompanied their best experiences of higher education. They know how terribly subversive the idea of pursuing knowledge for its own sake – rather than for the income it affords – can be. The parents of today’s students expect the university authorities to make sure that their children are given enough knowledge to secure the indispensable meal-ticket, but not so much that they feel impelled to challenge its worth.
Joyce needs no instruction in the delicate art of maintaining this crucial balance. Bringing the best principles of corporate governance to bear on tertiary educational institutions will be well-received in the National Party’s electoral heartland, where the 90-year-old maxim: “Less government in business, more business in government.”, is still regarded as the very summit of worldly wisdom.
The crowning irony of Joyce’s policy of dismantling what he sees as the cumbersome and overly prescriptive constitutions of our university and wananga councils is that it makes for less not more efficiency – worse, not better, decisions. The presence on these councils of representatives of the university’s staff and students; local employers and trade unions; the tangata whenua; along with sundry other cultural and religious institutions of the university’s host city in no way lessens their “governance capability” – it increases it.
In the world’s boardrooms, wasn’t it the prevalence of gimlet-eyed men and women with no interests beyond the last quarter’s spreadsheets and the next quarter’s projections that led its peoples into the global financial crisis? Isn’t it the capable governors’ monomaniacal attention to the quarterly bottom-line that makes effective action against long-terms problems like climate change impossible? Wasn’t it such individuals’ hunger for profits that led to the entombment of 29 human-beings in the Pike River Mine?
Small is not always beautiful, Mr Joyce. “Fewer, but better!” is the cry of the dictator – not the democrat.
In 1995, the British author, Will Hutton, brought out The State We’re In – a diagnosis of where Britain had gone wrong under Thatcherism and how to set it right.
One of Hutton’s key concepts was that of the “stakeholder”.
No matter what sort of institution one examines, be it a business or a university, there are always a great many more people with a stake in its success than just its shareholders and/or administrators. Bringing the concerns of these people: those who work in the enterprise; their families; the small businesses dependent on the money the institution and its employees spend; representatives of local and central government; and making sure they are represented on its governing board was a central theme of Hutton’s prescription for a better Britain.
It is one of the many tragedies associated with the rise of Tony Blair and the election of New Labour in 1997 that the excellent ideas contained in Hutton’s book, and which Blair toyed with for a while in Opposition, were never implemented by his government. And it is one of the many tragedies associated with the ideological decay of the New Zealand Labour Party that if Hutton’s ideas were ever debated within its ranks they have long since been forgotten.
Rather than criticising Joyce for being “ideological” in his handling of the tertiary education portfolio (as if any politician is going to behave non-ideologically!) Labour’s Tertiary Education spokesperson, Grant Robertson, would have done a lot better to have advanced a little ideology of his own.
University councils, with their many mandated stakeholders, are very far from being relics of the past. When viewed from the perspective of Hutton’s “stakeholders’ democracy” they are powerful harbingers of our administrative future. Robertson should be singing their praises as examples of the sort of “governance capability” a future Labour-Green Government will be demanding in the state we soon hope to be in.
The current state of our universities, or more accurately ‘job factories’, is an outcome of neoliberalism. The ‘job factories’ are in their current state because of a range of other neoliberal ideals which intersect with one another, and then reinforce each other.
We have student loans and student debt because we view an education as personal capital, rather than a social good. We have unemployment / underemployment at around 15-20% because it drives down wages and creates bigger profits; so then for new students to avoid being unemployed, they are subversively funneled into STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) The outcome of this is that critical thinking is looked down upon and the ‘job factory’ ideology perpetuates itself. Also, placed within our current socio-political environment this funneling of resources is sexist and racist; for example the $1.2 billion given to the University of Canterbury is disproportionately awarded to the subjects that are dominated by white males.
Another part of the problem is our immigration methods where we import educated immigrants to ‘fill in the gaps’. This means that the ‘stakeholders’ of NZ (ie everyone in NZ) don’t suffer from, or care about, our underfunded and uneducated society. But in the end most of us pay for it, either by paying off a massive debt for most of our life, or we see our children suffer economically.
We need an end to student debt and an end to student fees. We can only do this by raising the minimum wage to a livable level so that high school students aren’t forced to go to universities. The war generation provided a very livable wage for the uneducated babyboomers, but this was not passed on.
Another part of the problem is the shocking levels of unemployment / underemployment for 16-25 year olds…I think its about 35-40%
We have failed our youth and don’t seem to care – our university fees/loans/debt are a major part of this.
Feel free to say something Labour…
Your comment deserves it’s own website or even it’s own political party…
after watching the house debate the second reading: student loan amendment bill, I was HORRIFIED by the nasty, glib, entitled, ignorant, and all round fascist agenda driving this amendment which will see loanees ARRESTED at the airport.
All of the Honorable members lifting their Honorable hands to say “Aye, arrest the bastards”, will have received their university education free/gratis/courtesy of the state.
Never in the history of education have so few condemned so many with such impunity.
You’re totally right. Delete the loans. (a la Sth Canterbury Finance)
The stakeholder theory was “never implemented by his [Blair’s] government”.
On the contrary, s 172 of the Companies Act 2006 is a textbook example of the stakeholder theory put into action.
Your being glib right, you have read the book?
I’ve heard Hutton speak on the matter.
“The parents of today’s students expect the university authorities to make sure that their children are given enough knowledge to secure the indispensable meal-ticket, but not so much that they feel impelled to challenge its worth.”
I do not know about that, it is not just the parents’ fault, it is the conformism that runs throughout New Zealand society, as I observe it again and again. It runs deep, it is drummed into the kids from their first years at school or even ECE on. They stick them into school uniforms and the teach them, to tow the line, to be mindful of what is important. Education is to get ready for life, and life is about work and career.
Of course not all kids fall into line like that, and there are enough that cause challenges or drop out. But the middle class kids are mostly following, swiftly getting the messages that they receive not just at home, but through the institutions, the media and the daily world of business around them.
You are to be CONSUMER, you are to be PERFORMER, you are to be COMMERCIALLY MINDED, you are to COMPETE, you are to be in with the crowd, you must have the latest gadget, latest pair of brand shoes, brand clothing, have played the latest game, have the newest smart phone and tablet, and damned well fit in. It is about money, status, about being in the right place with the right people.
You will see no hippies, no dissidents, no challengers around anymore, people conform. Parents are workers or operate businesses, so they are in their ruts, to perform, to earn the money, to pay off the house, to pay off the car, to be in with the Joneses, and if you cannot keep it up, you will DROP and LOSE and NOT belong. They are the immediate role models for most kids.
But also is corporate business sponsoring some tertiary and research facilities and even students and events for students. The business lobby has been lobbying politicians for years. It was a wealthy New Zealander who funded extensions to Auckland University and I think also AUT, a Mr Owen Glenn, under the last Labour led governments.
Former Labour minister Steve Maharey went to take up a lead role at Massey University. The Labour led governments in the 2000’s worked closely with business to “reform” tertiary education, so we cannot expect too much in the way of a change of heart from Grant Robertson, I suspect.
Joyce of course takes it even further now, and he knows he can, as when Labour will criticise him, he will likely have some arguments up his sleeve to throw back at Labour.
That makes it so depressing, that Labour have this “history” or “heritage” of their own, which smells a bit like betrayal. It also makes it so hard for the wider public, to trust Labour when their MPs and members talk about returning to their roots and so forth.
The times that universities were having students engaged in lively debates and discussions on various topics have gone, and only a few active student minds do engage in such these days.
As another commenter writes, universities have become “factories” of education, or something of that kind, nothing else. It is depressing to see society degenerate in Orwellian kind of standards, where all are just little wheels in a huge machinery that is run by business interests and little else. Where people work, study and drop into bed at night, with little else to spend time on, but shop and consume, and then go to work again, day in day out, year in year out, and the only “change” some dream of is the big OE to perhaps find “the opportunity” to “make it big” one day.
Chris, I’m not sure Grant can do what you suggest. He would need a spin first, then a lot of backbone. You know I like Grant, but he just can’t pick his dander up enough to stick the pig that needs sticking.
I teach at a university. They’re pretty much a write-off, and have been for a while now. The barbarians were at the gate 20 years ago and now a cast of Odoacers run them. It appears to be too late to do much about it, and as Chris said, New Zealand is not a thinking person’s country.
If you really want a decent tertiary education, I would advise you to save money and go to one of the better Australian universities.
It really is too late. Nobody outside the beleaguered subjects in the university (with the possible exception of Bob Jones and a few liberals) actually cares. Many of them view the downfall of the traditional university with relish, even as they appropriate its trappings (you too can graduate with a degree in sport and recreation management!).
Nevertheless, the sad, Autumnal glow that accompanies humanities teaching these days has its own charm.
I am afraid the damage to our university/polytech system has already been done — 25 years ago, when reforms were implemented to create competition between universities and polys, and blurring the lines between the academic university system and the vocational polytech system, and opening the door to a proliferation of junk qualifications lacking any form of rigour, which are set up to lead into further qualifications, rather than the work force (level 1, then 2 then 3). And it seems these days, all universities/polys are worried about is chasing international students.
I was at Auckland University from 1990-94, right in the eye of the storm. 1990 was the first year that fees went up from a nominal amount to over $1000 and 1992 was the year they cut the student allowance system to shreds.
I remember seeing the attitudes of students changing yearly during this period as each new intake became noticeably more focused on studying and less inclined to pause and reflect on what they were doing. By my last year their were no capping week stunts worthy of the name – although the protest marches still had an anarchic tone about them.
I can hear people now “Well they bloody well should have been studying and not partying”. The problem is that young adults just released from the strict controls of school and home very much need to go through a period of decompression and loosening up. Strange as the behavior at the time may have looked it’s an important phase of a person’s development which gives them a bit of perspective on life. Hardly surprising that space for personal development gets eaten into though.
I not so concerned about the job-factory approach in itself though, my experience at university proved that the institution’s main role has always been to shoe-horn young minds into a restricted space – even doesn’t seem that way on the surface.
I agree with your anti anti-party stance. There is nothing wrong with parties, they should be seen in a more positive light because it suggests there is some fire in their belly. Socialising excessively and pushing boundaries are not the problem – becoming depoliticised is the problem.
I’d say university students having controlled and respectable parties is the problem. Nothing screams conformity more than a ‘wild’ party where nobody gets arrested and the damage amounts to a broken deck chair…
Also, placed within our current socio-political environment this funneling of resources is sexist and racist; for example the $1.2 billion given to the University of Canterbury is disproportionately awarded to the subjects that are dominated by white males.
It’s hardly Joyce’s fault that the fields of study that are expensive to teach and in which we need more graduates (ie, the sciences, engineering and IT) are dominated by white males. The universities would love it if more women applied to study those subjects rather than wasting their talents on fields in which we already have far too many graduates (law, business, the social sciences), but students get to choose what they study.
Re the post itself, spot on. Most NZers think of universities as fancier polytechs issuing fancier job qualifications – on that basis, Joyce will have an easy time corporatising them and seeing to it that they focus on job qualifications rather than higher education.
The problem with that is that the graduates they produce are largely dunces. The point of traditional higher education is to enable people to think for themselves and exercise a honed power of judgement. That skill seems to have vanished.
There are people graduating from New Zealand universities right now who cannot write or speak English (or Maori) to an acceptable level. We aren’t allowed to fail them (it’s not like there is an actual rule, but it is very hard to fail lots of students without heavy pushback).
As a recipient of one of these much-despised-by-Steven-Joyce humanities degrees, back when students were required to speak and write English on first enrolment, let alone graduation, I despise his university-as-fancy-polytech outlook. It’s poison to higher education.
“The universities would love it if more women applied to study those subjects rather than wasting their talents on fields in which we already have far too many graduates (law, business, the social sciences), but students get to choose what they study”
Its sexist and offensive to bring out the personal responsibility argument as an excuse for our gendered education and employment.
You may think we have too many social science graduates, but we could do with one more. Maybe if you were one, you wouldn’t be such an ignorant and stupid prick.
I’m not ignorant of the social sciences, I’m contemptuous of them. There’s a difference.
Maybe Steven Joyce has been hanging out with the blonde beauty from Beauty and the Geeks Australia who couldn’t see any point in knowing about history because we are living in the present and future.
That attitude is unfortunately quite a common one. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic.
How come in days of enlightenment we get such dimwits as Parata, Joyce et al leading us into a bright future?
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