AUS Tertiary Update

TEC sets up strategy to avoid OIA requests
The Tertiary Education Commission is advising tertiary education organisations (TEOs) how to ensure that information they provide to the Commission as part of their Investment Plan cannot be disclosed under the Official Information Act. Investment Plans form the basis of consultation between the TEC and individual institutions to determine the levels of public funding each institution will receive.
In a document entitled, Official Information Act information, the TEC says that the potential release under the Official Information Act of information provided by TEOs during the Investment Plan discussions could potentially impact on the continued supply of quality information.
The TEC says that it has decided to treat all information provided by TEOs as part of the Investment Plan process as confidential, subject to its obligations under the OIA, and that its Investment Managers will discuss confidentiality with each TEO at the outset of its engagement over Investment Plans.
TEOs are warned that stamping “Commercial in Confidence” on a paper is insufficient to protect it from discovery, and told they should identify what sensitive information is being provided and why it is confidential. “In the meantime,” the paper says, “the TEC will also consider how it can meet public interest considerations without disclosing confidential information.” The TEC goes on to provide other potential grounds for withholding information, including disclosure being likely to prejudice the supply of similar information in the future.
Association of University Staff National President, Professor Nigel Haworth, said it seemed extraordinary that information provided by TEOs as part of their justification for public funding should be secret. “Secrecy and attempts to evade OIA requests seem to run counter to the Tertiary Education Strategy and its call for the provision of tertiary education to be based on the best national interests,” he said. “What evidence could there possibly be that the potential release of information could potentially impact on the continued supply of quality information, particularly when the TEO must presumably supply quality information in order to receive public funding? Moreover, is it appropriate for a government agency to coach state-funded bodies in ways to avoid transparent reporting of their financial circumstances? ”
TEC Director Policy Advice and Government Services, Susan Shipley, has told Tertiary Update that the Investment Plan process depends on developing and maintaining trust and goodwill with TEOs so they can feel confident providing information that may be sensitive or prejudicial. “The TEC is looking at ways it can publish information that is in the public interest without disclosing information provided in confidence.”

Also in Tertiary Update this week
1. Another sacking to be challenged
2. Sour note for School of Music
3. Draft Māori education strategy released
4. AUT to get $50 million boost
5. UCSA rejoins NZUSA
6. Union disappointed in CPIT plan to cut staff numbers
7. Expansion of medical training to ease shortages
8. Protests over arrest of German academic
9. University complaints rise
10. Flimsy degrees not worth the money, say critics
11. UK university show climaxes on India TV

Another sacking to be challenged
Legal proceedings are due to be filed in the Employment Relations Authority next week challenging the dismissal of Lincoln University scientist Associate Professor Glenn Stewart. His is the second high-profile dismissal in recent weeks, following that of Dr Paul Buchanan from the University of Auckland.
Associate Professor Stewart, a highly respected scientist with a more than a thirty year career in Ecology and Conservation, was sacked without notice in late July after an investigation by the University into a complaint of alleged serious misconduct.
The Association of University Staff says that, while it cannot go into details of the misconduct complaint, Associate Professor Stewart had acknowledged to the University that he had made a mistake or error of judgment and had sought to resolve the issues on a constructive basis. The AUS says that, although there was a basis for the complaint, it did not warrant dismissal and the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Roger Field, had a range of options open to him other than dismissal. AUS Industrial Officer, Marty Braithwaite, said that Associate Professor Stewart had made a highly significant contribution to the local and international scientific community and was a highly respected staff member whose career had seen him working at the Forest Research Institute and Landcare Research as well as Lincoln University. “The consequence of dismissal for Associate Professor Stewart may spell the end to his scientific career and is a penalty which far outweighs the nature of the misconduct which has been found against him,” he said. “We have told the University that the impact of dismissal will be profound and that the AUS believes the dismissal to be both procedurally and substantively unfair. Reinstatement will be sought.”
In response to media questions this week, the AUS has confirmed that the matter is an academic one, but not related to a student complaint.
Mediation between the University and Associate Professor Stewart last Thursday failed to resolve the matter.

Sour note for School of Music
Under the heading “Top academic resigns”, the Sunday Star-Times has reported that the head of the University of Auckland’s School of Music has resigned within weeks of staff raising concerns about discrepancies in his claimed credentials. The report says that Professor Eric Hollis was appointed with much fanfare to the University’s School of Music by Sharman Pretty, Dean of the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, in 2004 but resigned this year, just weeks after colleagues raised concerns about irregularities in his curriculum vitae.
The Sunday Star-Times investigations showed that Hollis listed The Essential String Method on a “key publications” section of his CV and the University’s website although it was written by other people. Hollis was acknowledged in copies of the book because he brokered a deal between Guildhall, where he used to work, and the book’s publishers, Boosey and Hawkes in London, but he was not the author.
Attempts by staff to track down another item he listed as a key publication were unsuccessful, with the book The Modern Conservatoire, said to have been published by Doce Notas, not showing up on any web search they did. Doce Notas is a music shop in Spain. Hollis also claimed to have a Master of Music (MMus) in at least one document when he has a Master of Arts (MA).
In an interview in the University's magazine soon after his appointment, Hollis said Pretty pitched the job to him after they met through colleagues in England.

Draft Māori education strategy released
A draft strategy for Māori education which includes among its aims an increase from 30 percent in 2001 to 35 percent by 2012 in the number of Māori students beginning and completing bachelors' degrees within five years, was launched last week by the Ministers of Social Development and Māori Affairs, Steve Maharey and Parekura Horomia
Ka Hikitia - Managing for Success: The draft Māori Education Strategy 2008 - 2012 focuses primarily on improving the performance of the education system in ensuring that Māori students enjoy greater educational success and that the education system values, respects and is successful for Māori. The draft strategy notes that 53 percent of Māori boys left school in 2005 without qualifications and looks at what needs to happen at secondary school to better prepare Māori students for success in tertiary education and beyond.
AUS Māori Officer, Naomi Manu, says that, although there is not a great deal of specific tertiary-education content in the draft strategy, it identifies where the education system fails Māori and aims to remedy that. “Primarily, the failures occur at secondary-school level and making up lost ground at the tertiary level is not realistic unless positive outcomes for Māori are achieved at school,” she said.
Mrs Manu said that the Tertiary Education Strategy 2007 – 2012 had neglected to value or show a commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi in Aotearoa New Zealand and that it is important that the Māori education strategy recognise the role of the Treaty of Waitangi and attempt to change the education system to better align it with Māori values and Māori treasures. “In particular, an emphasis on Mātauranga Māori and te Reo Māori will have a greater bearing on preparing pathways for Māori into tertiary education,” she said.
Public consultation hui will take place from early September through until the end of October, with a final strategy to be released in March 2008.

AUT to get $50 million boost
The Government is to pump $50 million into AUT to enable it to continue its development and improve its research and teaching capability, rectifying what the University describes as a decades-old capital imbalance. AUT Vice-Chancellor, Derek McCormack, said that the case for a capital injection was compelling, adding that, while the University is very efficient operationally, its balance sheet had, for decades, constrained its development.
The New Zealand Herald has interpreted this as having “racked up” debt through a $203 million building programme over the ten years to 2005 to upgrade dilapidated facilities and cater for massive roll growth.
Announcing the new funding, the Minister for Tertiary Education, Dr Michael Cullen, said that the new investment represents the Government’s commitment to ensuring AUT continues to develop as a vibrant, research-led university in the steadily growing Auckland region.
The new funding is, however, subject to several financial and capability-building performance measures. “This stringent requirement is in line with the Government’s new approach to investing in tertiary education,” said Dr Cullen. “Under the new approach that starts in 2008, the Government will invest in tertiary-education organisations according to what they will deliver for students and other stakeholders. The Government’s investment will then be monitored according to performance measures agreed before the investment is made.”
The University’s other priorities of reducing debt and improving facilities will also be supported through this $50 million investment. “We have worked very hard with what little we have. This investment assures a sustainable future for the University, supporting our contribution to the social and economic development of the Auckland region and the country as a whole,” said Mr McCormack.

UCSA rejoins NZUSA
The New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) has welcomed the decision of University of Canterbury students to rejoin the national representative body, with its Co-President, Josh Clark, describing the move as fantastic. He said that Canterbury students had voted overwhelmingly in a recent referendum to rejoin NZUSA.
University of Canterbury Students’ Association President, Belinda Bundy, also expressed her pleasure at the referendum's outcome. “Our students have spoken, and what they have told us is that they want to stand up and be counted. I'm incredibly pleased the UCSA is in a position to carry out this mandate we have been given,” she said. “I look forward to working much more closely with NZUSA and its members in the very near future and I am very excited at the prospect of what we can achieve collectively.”
Josh Clark said that NZUSA is really looking forward to a strong, united student voice for 2008. “This will be fundamental in achieving wins for students in the 2008 election and beyond,” he said.
NZUSA has sixteen member students’ associations representing over 165,000 students at universities and polytechnics around New Zealand.

Union disappointed in CPIT plan to cut staff numbers
The Association of Staff in Tertiary Education (ASTE) says it is disappointed that the Christchurch Polytechnic and Institute of Technology will cut staff number and courses in order to stave off a financial crisis. Last week, the CPIT Council adopted most of the recommendations of a report by accounting firm Deloitte that said the institution has a large portfolio of programmes that do not consistently contribute at desired financial levels, that there are too many programmes with a low student-to-staff ratio and that there is some evidence of over-teaching and over-assessment.
Included among the recommendations adopted by the Council are a reduction in staff numbers by 17 percent, or around 140 full-time equivalent jobs, by 2011, a reduction in low-volume, low-viability course programmes and an increase in class sizes, a reduction in fee discounts in trades programmes and other changes in areas of purchasing and capital expenditure.
The institution has forecast a loss of $3.5 million this year, but hopes to turn that around with the adoption of the Deloitte recommendations and the generation of a $7 million surplus by 2011. Recently, CPIT also received $11 million from the Tertiary Education Commission’s Capital Reinvestment Fund
ASTE’s Christchurch Field Officer, Mike Dawson, said that shedding staff, axing courses and increasing fees for trade training could all be counter-productive to ensuring the long-term viability of the polytechnic, as its financial problems were driven principally by under-funding. “This solution deals only with the immediate crisis at CPIT and does not take a long-term strategic view for either the institution or the sector,” he said. “The majority of New Zealand’s polytechnics and institutes of technology are facing financial problems and these should be addressed nationally, rather than having each institution cut corners to make the books balance.”
Mr Dawson said that it seems extraordinary that CPIT is proposing to reduce fee discounting for trades training when the institution currently faces strong competition in this area such as that from the SIT, which has a no-fees policy for these courses.

Expansion of medical training to ease shortages
The Ministers for Tertiary Education and Health announced yesterday that forty more doctors are to be trained each year in New Zealand, twenty at each of the Schools of Medicine. The forty new places will bring to 365 the number of first-year medical students studying at Otago and Auckland Universities from next year.
Increasing the number of New Zealand medical graduates was a key recommendation of the Health Workforce Taskforce, a standing committee formed last year to provide advice on the health and disability sectors.
The Minister for Tertiary Education, Dr Michael Cullen, said lifting the number of medical undergraduates is a positive step in meeting the challenges of a tight international medical labour market in which many countries face retention issues. “Until recently, 285 places were available each year, but in 2004 the Labour-led Government increased that by forty and in 2008 this will increase by another forty, taking the total to 365,” he said.
Dr Cullen added that, given the long time periods it takes to fully train medical practitioners, increasing the number of New Zealand students studying medicine will help strengthen the country’s future workforce.

Worldwatch
Protests over arrest of German academic
Academics from around the world have protested to Germany’s Federal Prosecutor about the arrest and detention of a Berlin sociologist who is accused of associating with a terrorist group, apparently on the basis of his academic work. Andrej Holm, from Berlin's Humboldt University, who specialises in urban gentrification, was arrested on 1 August on suspicion of aiding a militant organisation suspected of carrying out more than twenty-five arson attacks in Berlin since 2001.
In protest letters, academics from across Europe, the United States and Canada say that Mr Holm's arrest was based on his academic writings, and the evidence used to connect him to terrorism was at best flimsy.
Mr Holm was arrested under the anti-terrorism law, with the Federal Prosecutor’s office citing the repeated use of words such as “gentrification” and “inequality” in his academic papers, saying the terms are similar to those used by the urban activist organisation “militante gruppe”. According to a prosecution report, the frequency of the overlap between words used by Mr Holm and the group was “striking, and not to be explained through a coincidence”.
In a letter, signed by more than 100 academics, the Federal Prosecutor was urged to release Mr Holm from his single cell in Berlin's Moabit prison. “We strongly object to the notion of intellectual complicity adopted by the Federal Prosecutor's office in its investigation ... such arguments allow any piece of academic writing to be potentially incriminating,” the letter said.
Mr. Holm's case is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing tomorrow.
From the Education Guardian

University complaints rise
Universities in the United Kingdom have experienced a 44 percent increase in student complaints in the last year and should do more to help resolve them, according to the annual report of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA). The OIA accepted 465 student complaints in 2006 and resolved 389, compared with 322 complaints in 2005 and ninety-one in 2004. Each complaint takes an average of twenty-four weeks to conclude, although some take far longer.
The OIA said just over a quarter of complaints (27 percent) were at least partially justified or settled before a decision was made. The rest were found not to be justified.
Most complaints came from students taking subjects allied to Medicine, Business and Administrative Studies and Law, with students of Veterinary Science and Agriculture complaining least. Two-thirds of student complainants were over twenty-four years old, and 39 percent of them were postgraduates, while 50 percent of those who disclosed disabilities suffered from dyslexia.
The University and College Union (UCU) said that the increase in student complaints was to be expected after recent changes to higher-education funding, with the UCU General Secretary, Sally Hunt, saying that the shift towards a market in higher education was inevitably bringing about a consumer culture in universities. “If students are unhappy with the service being provided they are much more likely to seek redress, even though the majority of complaints are not upheld,” she said.
From the Education Guardian and UCU

Flimsy degrees not worth the money, say critics
Thousands of students in the United Kingdom are wasting their own and taxpayers’ money on “Mickey Mouse” higher-education courses, a low-tax campaign group has claimed. The Taxpayers’ Alliance poured scorn on more than 400 courses at ninety-one universities and colleges, claiming subjects like beauty therapy, equestrian psychology, golf management and philosophy with outdoor adventure were giving respectability to training that would be better done on the job.
It calculated that such “non-courses” of “dubious academic merit” were costing taxpayers over £40m a year and said that increasing numbers of young people were committing themselves to “spending thousands of pounds and three years of their life studying a subject that may raise their expectations of employment while leaving them no more employable than when they started”.
The Non-Courses Report 2007 has been strongly rejected by universities, which say it smacks of academic snobbery and misunderstands how higher education is responding to demands from employers.
The Times Higher Education Supplement

UK university show climaxes on India TV
A primetime Indian reality TV show reached its climax this week as the first winners emerged from the tens of thousands of teenagers who have battled it out to secure one of five scholarships to a British university.
Scholar Hunt: Destination UK has followed the fortunes of students chasing undergraduate courses at UK universities with international tuition fees and living expenses paid.
For the British universities, the show is just the latest, although perhaps biggest, effort to reach out to the baby boom rippling through the Indian population of 1.1 billion.
The student who won Warwick University’s Engineering scholarship fought off 14,000 students to convince academic judges of his competence in everything from differential equations to the construction of a catapult.
With 19,205 Indian students studying in the UK in the 2005-06 academic year, the second-largest group after students from China according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the efforts seem to have been paying off.
British institutions continue, however, to face tough competition from Australian and US universities, and Scholar Hunt may give the UK a major extra boost.
The Times Higher Education Supplement

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