Mayor, ex-PM join call for Government to ‘Save Tertiary Education’
Former prime minister Helen Clark, Wellington mayor Tory Whanau, and award-winning director Jane Campion have signed an open letter calling on the Government to “save tertiary education”.
Written on behalf of both Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington and Otago University, where hundreds of jobs are set to go as both battle significant deficits, the letter called on the Government to act.
Addressed to Tim Fowler, the chief executive of the Tertiary Education Commission, Education Minister Jan Tinetti, Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, it said the proposed cuts were a “consequence of government underfunding of universities for the past decade”.
“The proposed job cuts across the tertiary sector represent more than job losses; they signify the erosion of teaching quality, research excellence and student services,” it read.
It’s difficult watching something you have grown to despise burn down, but that’s honestly how I feel about our obscene user pays education system that has made students clients and who have slavishly worshiped international students at the expense of domestic ones.
Screw the Universities!
Not just for their woke nonsense, but because they have become a user pays industry that has little social good.
By making Tertiary education user pays, they stopped being a talent based meritocracy and just became a middle class virtue signal.
Their devotion to churning through International Students has made them focused as a corporation, not as a social or public good.
Watching all these greedy Universities who have turned into user pays education monstrosities scream in pain is glorious.
Should we save Tertiary education?
Sure, but let’s not allow them to be the user pays hell holes they’ve mutated into!
1: Free Education and liveable student allowances for NZ Citizens: Stop being a money pit and give Kiwis WITH THE ACADEMIC ENTRY REQUIREMENTS free education and a liveable student allowance. This will allow Universities to regain their social importance rather than being a cheap research lab for capitalism.
2: Bring back Universal Student Union Membership: Without the structure of Universal Student Unions, students end up being nothing more than commodities traded between institutions. By having Universal Student Union Membership students regain their voice at the Tertiary table forces change.
3: Mass state investment into multiple campuses in India: One of the problems of Indian migrant workers with great skills is that they are rarely recognised in NZ. Having offshore Campuses in India would allow that recognition to occur while Students study in India and can graduate towards citizenship in NZ once skill sets are met. That way you give Tertiary education a chance to earn revenue offshore while focusing on specific domestic skills needed in NZ.
You can’t stamp out user pays education, but you can offset its impact on New Zealanders while generating a better system.
Why simply rebuild the current user pays system that leaves so many enslaved in debt?
Why not tilt it to favour those who have built the foundations on which Universities sit while exploring offshore campuses that can build the next future foundations?
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Steven Joyce did a lot of damage to the universities when he was in power. He was carrying out a vendetta against the universities who had failed him. He axed student representation on the university councils destroying any semblance of democracy. I believe this was one of the worst actions of the Key government.
Agreed, it killed the democratic process there. Campus culture also entered a collapse around that time. There wasn’t any money to give people what might be called the ‘traditional college experience’.
I also think that at some point in the future, university-based tertiary education will eventually become compulsory (probably up to third year undergrad’ level). Not everyone will be smart enough to get a science degree; some people will take much easier courses. But in a world where everything is computerised, roboticised, and highly automated? People will need specialised technical skills to design, build, maintain and operate all of these new machines.
Martyn –
The first suggestion – great
The second suggestion – Nope, my experience is that Student Union Executives fund Green/Labour campaigns
The third suggestion – The Indian Government needs to fund that, also many Indian migrants lie on their CV regarding their skills…
Labour Government with almost 6 years to do something have in fact made matters worse.
Who oversaw this worsening none other than Chippy when he was Minister of Education.
Are you going to defend Steven Joyce Bob?
Very few National Ministers of Education do a good job. Labour ministers tend to be much better and Hipkins passed the test. Everyone has an opinion on education but do they know anything about it? The majority don’t.
If you were designing tertiary education from scratch – with a blank sheet of paper as the starting point, no-one would reinvent the university.
The universities have become infected with CRT and gender ideology and as such now represent state indoctrination institutions.
Professor Grant Schofield is interesting to read on this.
I am glad to hear you talk about meritocracy Martyn.
And I think teaching philosophy, anthropology etc has merit, but only to a select few of very bright students, like it was back in the 70s. Let he pay for their education, but please start training Drs nurses, radiographers, engineers for free
I bet you would make it illegal for LGBT’s to exist on campus.
I also think that you would also ban the teaching of evolution as well.
Also CRT is merely teaching the fact that white people have treated blacks like an inferior race for the past 300 years. If you had your way, you would probably ban the teaching of slavery, segreation, apartheid, Jim Crow, lynching, the KKK, everything. That blacks had it great and got all uppity.
Typical fucking Karen. I bet you would have got Emmet TIll lynched if you existed back in the 1950’s.
When those teaching evolution recognise that we can’t even bring a dead cell back to life, we don’t have a clue about how to make a living cell and despite about 70 years since making a few amino acids the difficulty involved in making that living cell has only increased as we learn more about how life works. I realise that we need evolution to work since we don’t want to accept any other origin of life but that is a weird excuse for it’s existence.
Millsy I don’t think you read my replies.
I have no problem with LGB people. A very close relative of mine is lesbian. I hosted her civil union ceromony.
I have huge problems with the T and the Q. I have issues with the exponential increase in young teen girls who are now identifying as male. It is most likely a social contagion phenomenal just like anorexia, bulimia and self harm were/are. The problem is gender ideology and the insistence on gender affirming care. Many of these girls are starting on puberty blockers and then go on to cross sex hormones. These drugs are off label to treat gender dysphoria. They have recently been withdrawn in the UK because they can’t be sure of the benefits or the risk factors. But it seems these drugs can cause osteoporousis. They also can interfere with the ability to orgaism and lead to infertility. And of course part of gender affirming care involves giving young teen girls double masectomies and hysterectomies.
So if you are happy to advocate for gender affirmining care (and remember these kids will need to be a lifetime on medication) then by all means shout it from the roof top that that is what you support. I suggest you educate yourself about how the Tand Q have taken over the LGB movement and how this has been extremely bad for in particlular lesbians.
I marched against the Spring Box tour in the 1980s. I have never hit anyone in my life, nor have I ever advocated violence.
Your mischaraterisation is actually laughable.
I hope you bother to read my replies Millsy so you realise how much you mis characterise me.
I have no problem with LBG. In fact I hosted the civil union of a very close relative who is a lesbian. I love her dearly. It was her treatment by the Tras that peaked me about gender ideology and what an aggressive, anti women, anti lesbian movement it is and how it is authoritarian in nature.
Read more about the T and Q of what is now the alphabet soup. And it you still support the medicalisation of vulnerable teens using medication that was used to chemically castrate Alan Turing and if you are all for 16year old girls having double mastectomies, by all means advocate for gender ideology
And you certainly wouldn’t let a Labour Party person near it,particularly the Chipster.
More free stuff to soak up the extra tax dollars you hope the rich will be paying.
Piss off to the USA if you dont like it. FUCK USER PAYS!!!
I ask again millsy how long did you live in the USA and where?
The USA has low taxes and no public health care system. This is the society that Trevor wants. No public service, no welfare system, no payrises.
You don’t need to live in hell to know what it is. Americans and American lovers are not welcome in human countries.
Haaa Mohammad, and which theocratic country did you or your parents ‘escape’ from to a democratic one like NZ?
Ahhh Millsy, great debating skills as usual I see!
Spray and walk away comments is your only way, are you a teenager?
‘no pay rises and no health service if National win the election’….is your normal go to comment, but never elaborate nor debate when questioned on it, which begs the question are you a teenager?
If not, then you need to grow up mentally and learn that others have different opinions to yours, welcome to free speech.
So Im right what’s your take on the resident Daily Blog troll Bob?
Labour bad National good is his go to debating skills, which begs the question is he a teenager?
If not, then he needs to grow up mentally and learn that others have different opinions to ours, welcome to free speech.
With a stupid name like yours, I wouldn’t even venture into what/who you are…but what mature adult would obsess about a poster on a blog that has a different political viewpoint than you? And to the extent of you practically stalk the other poster online at TDB as well as having said poster in your blog name, sad…sad…sad!
Mister Silly Name your comment requires no reply.
I would add stop student unions from selling alcohol, the last thing students need is alcohol if we want them to achieve at a high level. The fact I started drinking when I went to uni and quit 10 years later probably explains my negative attitude towards alcohol as while I do remember some good times it’s overall impact is bad.
Learning about alcohol;s bad effects and how our psychology can be worked over, self-management, personal moral behaviour, being sagacious, should be a core subject for everyone at uni. Alcohol has insidiously undermined the principled codes and strength of many countries around the world. It’s great in small doses but like arsenic taken like that too regularly, it leads to deterioration. It underlines how important it is for some humanities courses to be included in all tertiary and secondary study. And as traditinally taught, just not for purposes of understanding persuasion and human flexiblity.
The universities are I suppose taxed by gummint for their land and buildings which are supposed to be public property owned by us all. But of course neo liberals bring in competition and efficiency; do the unis need all those grounds provided for their work which could be provided by mass lectures in a skyscraper leased from Minta Corpse
What do I most resent that unis and upper tertiary institutions have presented to me?: Friedman et al Neo-liberal depressives, Anthony Giddens 3rd Way obfuscation, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way) and insufficient study of the Humanities and Social Sciences for the betterment of how we behave towards each others and provide for our needs including having work and a livable wage and housing. Basic stuff that you don’t have to go to University to learn.
Also unis are vast machines that get away from their original drivers.
Posh Boys – a good bed-time read! ‘Posh Boys: How the English Public Schools Ruin Britain by Robert Verkaik’.
Eton and others started out as ‘philanthropic institutions whose statutes expressly excluded the children of the wealthy’. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/29/posh-boys-english-public-schools-robert-verkaik-review
https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/posh-boys-how-the-english-public-schools-ruin-britain/
The Observer – Alex Renton
In his fascinating, enraging polemic, Verkaik touches on one of the strangest aspects of the elite schools and their product’s domination of public life for two and a half centuries: the acquiescence of everyone else Verkaik’s larger theme is the toxification of British public life by the private school system and the injustice and inequality that educational apartheid based on wealth entails. But the blatant theft of public resources is the book’s sharpest point. From the very beginning the institutions— including St Paul’s, Winchester and Eton—have been hijacked by the wealthy, though they were plainly set up to benefit the poor … Verkaik’s solution is ‘slow and peaceful euthanasia.’ He would suffocate the schools … My money says private schools will survive: since the second world war successive governments have failed to curtail them in any significant way….
So do we need the universities? Has neoliberal shuttered vision and business orientation killed their value for free thought excluding the moneyed meaning of free? Do unis recognise their role of starting off thinking that can be harmful or herald good new ways? Have they become tools of innovative human-free systems and money makers for established elites?
Is Millsy a bot?
Years ago I would have defended Universities on the basis of “higher thought”, “philosophy”, “Science” , but since “bums on seats user pays” and Vice Chancellors as neo liberal overlords, not so much. They became job factories for business and corporates, with all manner of bollocks comparing international institutions against each other. Tertiary staff and students were successfully divided and did not stick up for each other enough as well.
Trade and IT training should be treated as such. Finance Capital and Legal should pay for their own training.
Agree with Martyn’s first two points, not sure about the third.
Brick and mortar universities no longer hold a monopoly on higher education.
They have diluted their prestige and their reputation for critical thinking, free speech and rigorous debate.
They have become sausage factories of woke dogma, cancel culture and student led direction.
Their slavish fawning for foreign student cash has left them high and dry.
They are simply a joke.
forget the british/us ‘experts’ and get in some germans at least they know how to run an education system…big changes YUP but to a proven not a theoretical model