TEU Tertiary Update Vol 12 No 9

CANTERBURY UNIVERSITY CONTEMPLATES STUDENT CUTS

The University of Canterbury’s vice–chancellor, Dr Rod Carr, has suggested that, with increasing numbers of students not being matched by extra government funding, he could support tougher standards to keep student enrolments down.

Dr Carr told the Press last week that the university is forecasting a $3 million shortfall in 2009, with domestic enrolments up 5 percent on the same time last year.

While pleased about the increase in student numbers, he said that it would be unsustainable to take unfunded students on an ongoing basis.

Government requirements mean that the university could not restrict people from enrolling, but it could restrict numbers returning to study, Dr Carr told the Press. “Either quality will deteriorate or, at some point, you’ll have to say these ones are not keeping up to the standard required.”

While the university is seeking more funds from the Tertiary Education Commission. TEC spokesperson David Nicholson said Otago and Canterbury Universities’ expected growth is within agreed thresholds. “They can enrol additional students on an unfunded basis. International students who pay full fees are a common example of this practice.”

TEU president, Dr Tom Ryan, said that it would be unfortunate to see students excluded from study on such arbitrary grounds. “It really is important that the government gets on top of the funding issue and provides our institutions with the amount needed to cover all domestic students, new and continuing.”

ALSO IN TERTIARY UPDATE THIS WEEK:

1. New chair for tertiary-teaching-award panel
2. Otago University’s secretive council draws ire
3. TEC today announces who’s to go
4. MyMassey becomes YourMassey
5. Lower graduate salaries caused by high employment and rising wages
6. Five equity reviews finalised this month
7. Education investment to ease economic crisis
8. Gender pay-gap grows in UK universities
9. US drug companies fund doctor education
10. VCs paid less than football stars

NEW CHAIR FOR TERTIARY-TEACHING-AWARD PANEL

Emeritus Professor Noeline Alcorn has been appointed as the new chair of the panel that selects New Zealand’s top tertiary-education teachers in the annual national Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards.

The awards aim to recognise and encourage excellence in tertiary-education teaching and reward teaching practices that are student-focused and committed to promoting effective learning. Ako Aotearoa took over the administration and management of the awards from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority late last year. There are up to nine awards annually of $20,000 each and a supreme award, the Prime Minister’s Award, of $30,000.

The Ako Aotearoa board received endorsement for the appointment from the minister of education, Anne Tolley, last week. Bryan Gould, chair of the Ako Aotearoa Board said, “We are delighted that the minister has endorsed our recommendation of Professor Alcorn for this role. Noeline has an outstanding reputation both as an educational leader and a researcher and has an extraordinary breadth of experience across different parts of New Zealand’s education system.” Professor Alcorn replaces Emeritus Professor Graeme Fraser, who retired from the role last year having been chair since the first round of award winners were selected in 2002.

Professor Alcorn, who is principal and dean of the school of education at the University of Waikato, was made a companion of the Queen’s Service Order in 2005 in recognition of her services to tertiary education. During a varied career, she has been a member of the New Zealand Polytechnics’ Programmes Committee and chair of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. In 2006, Professor Alcorn chaired the Education Panel for the PBRF Quality Evaluation.

Professor Alcorn says, “Outstanding teachers are the lifeblood of our tertiary system, enthusing, inspiring and challenging students to learn, question, think and create. I see the Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards given to our top teachers as crucially important in drawing attention to the worth and importance of tertiary teaching, and am honoured to follow Professor Graeme Fraser in the role of chair of the committee”.

OTAGO UNIVERSITY’S SECRETIVE COUNCIL DRAWS IRE

The Otago Daily Times reports that the University of Otago council is being challenged over its practice of excluding large parts of its business from the public view. At both the last two meetings, a significant number of agenda items were discussed in “part two” with the public excluded.

The council is allowed to exclude the public from listening to its discussions under the Official Information Act and other legislation so long as it has “good reason”. At the last meeting, only two substantial agenda items were discussed publicly, with twelve other matters considered privately.

University registrar Jan Flood told the Otago Daily Times that reasons the council cited for excluding the public included “commercial confidentiality, personal privacy, legal professional privilege and not to prejudice or disadvantage negotiations”.

However, tertiary-education-student campaigner Mark Baxter has taken issue with the practice, arguing that it is not in keeping with the spirit of the Official Information Act.

Tertiary Update subsequently contacted Mr Baxter, who doubts the judgments of many of those making the calls when public interest outweighs commercial interest:

“I can understand why some of the details of the financial decisions that the university makes would be done in private to protect personal employee information, or to avoid prejudicing or disadvantaging negotiations,” he said. “However the basic principles that those detailed decisions are based on should be debated openly, and councillors should be publicly accountable for those principles. In my limited direct experience there seems to be little will to tease out bits the public could be privy to from the truly sensitive information,” Mr Baxter continued.

“I think that councillors should be responsible for debating publicly about how they intend to respond to the State Service Commission’s bargaining parameters or the government’s EFTS funding cap. Council cannot claim to represent the university community when it hides from it in a cloistered room making important decisions and not explaining why,” stated Mr Baxter.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs said that this problem was not unique to the University of Otago.

“Tertiary Institutions need to be accountable to New Zealand and as a union we are increasingly worried about the amount of information that is being moved by institutions across New Zealand into the closed parts of their meetings,’ Ms Riggs said.

TEC TODAY ANNOUNCES WHO’S TO GO

The Nelson Mail reports that the Tertiary Education Commission will make its decision today over which of its staff will be made redundant to help the government reach its cost cutting targets.

Christchurch Central MP Brendon Burns is suggesting that the entire South Island staff could be sacked. The commission has already announced it will lay off 76 staff, reducing its total employees to about 292, but it is not naming those workers until today.

Mr Burns says that there are more than 100 private training organisations around the South Island offering a huge variety of courses from hairdressing to horticulture.

“These organisations are all funded for their student numbers via the TEC and engage with the South Island staff. This service and scrutiny will now be replaced by a call centre in South Auckland. Is this how the government will deliver its promises on excellence, improved standards, and accountability in education?”

TEC spokesperson Jude Urlich, however, told the Mail that Mr Burns had pre-empted Thursday’s decision and would not know the details of it. TEC chief executive Roy Sharp told a parliamentary select committee last week that, despite the job cuts, the commission would still be able to do everything it is meant to do.

Professor Sharp said that TEC is moving towards using modern technology to replace some face-to-face contacts. Telecommunications, video communications, and offices in Auckland and Wellington would be used to centralise staff.

LOWER GRADUATE SALARIES CAUSED BY HIGH EMPLOYMENT AND RISING WAGES

The New Zealand Vice–Chancellors’ Committee (NZVCC) has challenged media coverage of last week's’ OECD report Education Today focusing on the comparatively low rate of pay graduates in New Zealand receive for their years of study. The study shows that New Zealand graduates have one of the lowest differentials in wages and salaries compared to non-graduates in the OECD. This would suggest that there is less financial benefit from undertaking tertiary education in New Zealand than there is in other countries.

The NZVCC, however, notes that part of the issue is that New Zealand’s non-graduates have recently been earning higher average rates of pay as a result of low unemployment rates and a growing economy. By comparison, graduates’ salaries and wages are less directly affected by the economic well-being of the country. With one of the lowest unemployment rates in the OECD, it is therefore inevitable that the difference in earnings between those with higher qualifications and those with lower qualifications would fall and be lower than in most countries.

The NZVCC also argues that New Zealand has a tradition of relatively smaller differences in earnings between high and low earners compared to countries such as the United States. It concludes that many of New Zealand’s graduates are immigrants from other countries with non-English speaking backgrounds who end up, at least temporarily, in employment not suited to their training or education, and with consequently lower salaries or wages.

MYMASSEY BECOMES YOURMASSEY

Massey University’s Albany Students’ Association is alleging that the university experienced a serious breach of security on Monday evening, and that its security systems are now under close scrutiny.

Rawa Karetai, president of the Albany Students’ Association, says the university’s intranet system utilised by students from all across New Zealand, MyMassey, suffered a security breach that left thousands of students able to access other people’s highly sensitive information.

Mr Karetai says that he now has access to a variety of highly sensitive personal information that was not his own. Information at his disposal included, but was not limited to, ID numbers, full names, dates of birth, IRD numbers, and academic transcripts as well as contact addresses and phone numbers. Students who had discovered this fault were also able to sign up the person whose information they could access for new papers or to amend any of their contact details.

“I was first made aware that the website www.mymassey.com started giving out personal information about other students at about 10.40 pm. I immediately went and found a computer that was free and started to check to see if I was experiencing the same issues,” Mr Karetai said.

The university says the lapse in information security was caused by the installation of a computer operating system patch. Potentially, students were able to see confidential information presented on the web page they requested. However the university believes, in most cases it would not have been clear whose partial information they were viewing.

“It appears that the vast majority of students realised the information they were viewing was not their own and did not attempt to change it or update it, and simply logged out,” a university statement says. “Four students did update or add information to files of other students, presumably on the assumption they were viewing their own data. This has been remedied and the original settings restored.”

FIVE EQUITY REVIEWS FINALISED THIS MONTH

Pay and employment equity (PaEE) reviews are progressing well in the tertiary-education sector, with five institutes of technology and polytechnics, Otago, Telford, Waiariki, NMIT, and UCOL, and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa all scheduled to have their pay and employment equity review reports and action plans finalised by the end of this month.

Eight other institutions that started reviews last year or early this year are due to complete their reviews by August at the latest. They are Aoraki, Bay of Plenty, CPIT, EIT, NorthTec, Te Tai Poutini, the Open Polytechnic, and WINTEC. Last month, Massey announced that it would be the first university to undertake a review.

This widespread progress in the sector stands in contrast to media reports of the government scaling back support for pay and employment equity reviews. While the government has cancelled two PaEE investigations in the state–sector, reviews and plans in the tertiary-education sector are making solid progress and are likely to identify several systematic gender inequities both with institutions and across the sector as a whole.

In the latest PaEE Reviews in the Tertiary Sector newsletter, project managers for the various reviews were reminded that it was important to keep an eye out for factors that contribute to gender inequities that may not be within the power of the organisation to change but which may have some sector-wide implications. Examples of these factors may be the labour market, collective agreements, or funding.

EDUCATION INVESTMENT TO EASE ECONOMIC CRISIS

The global trade-union movement yesterday released its international strategy for economic recovery. Getting the World to Work: Global Union Strategies for Recovery sets out creative and constructive alternatives for getting people back to work and rebuilding a sustainable economy.

The publication articulates positions which Global Unions put before world leaders in Washington in November 2008, and which will again be on the table at the G20 summit in London this week.

The publication was produced by Global Unions, working with the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD and the International Trade Union Confederation. Edited by Aidan White, secretary general of the International Federation of Journalists, it provides a unified vision from the world trade union movement while providing sector-specific perspectives on the issues.

Education International general secretary Fred van Leeuwen argues in the document that there is a need to mobilise political support for investment in education as a critical element in economic recovery. At the same time, as many skilled, educated, and experienced people are losing jobs, many more teachers and instructors are needed around the world for vocational education.

“Getting the World to Work makes a significant contribution to the public debate about how to reverse the disastrous course that led the world to this crisis,” Mr van Leeuwen said. “It reflects both the diversity and the unity of the worldwide union movement, and I’m sure it will help inform many important discussions about this critical challenge facing us all.”

Education International’s section of Getting the World to Work is available on the TEU website at www.teu.ac.nz/?p=1804 and the full document can be downloaded at www.global-unions.org .

GENDER PAY-GAP GROWS IN UK UNIVERSITIES

The number of women lecturers and researchers at British universities rose more slowly last year than in previous years and the pay gap with men widened slightly, according to figures published today by the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

Women make up 18.7 percent of university professors, up from 17.5 percent in 2006-07. The proportion of female academic staff in all grades has increased over the same period, from 42.3 percent in 2006-07 to 42.6 percent in 2007-08.

The University and College Union (UCU) welcomed the increase in women professors but said the sector needs to do more to promote gender equality, with male professors paid 13.9 percent more than women in 2007-08 compared with 13.7 percent the previous year.

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said, “For years we have heard enlightened rhetoric in higher education about the issue of unfair pay for women.”

“Sadly, there are still wide gaps in our institutions today with a worrying year-on-year rise in the overall gender pay-gap. There is not yet enough being done to root out and tackle the problem.”

Ms Hunt urged the introduction of mandatory equal pay audits and concerted efforts by institutions to close the pay-gap.

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the Equality Challenge Unit, said, “Any increase in the proportion of female professors in higher-education institutions is very encouraging.”
“However, the figures show us that women continue to be under-represented in higher grades.” Ms Dandridge continued. Although 18.7 percent of professors are female, women make up 47.9 percent of lecturers and 38.6 percent of senior lecturers and researchers. The gap between these numbers is significant.”

“While many institutions have been addressing this issue with some success, there is clearly still a long way to go,” said Ms Dandridge. “We must continue to address the barriers that limit the potential of female academic staff.”

From Anthea Lipsett at the Guardian

US DRUG COMPANIES FUND DOCTOR EDUCATION

A Milwaukee publication says drug companies have largely taken over the field of doctor education, in part by bankrolling physician-education courses at medical schools.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that industry-funded doctor-education courses offered at the University of Wisconsin (UW) often present a slanted view by favouring prescription medications over non-drug therapies and by failing to mention important side effects.

Among its findings are that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is spending $US12.3 million on an online UW course for doctors to tell them how to get their patients to quit smoking. A top priority in the course is prescribing Pfizer’s drug, Chantix, which has been linked to serious side effects, including a rash of suicides. But mention of the side effects can’t be found in course materials.

Four of the nine UW doctor-education courses offered online are funded by the industry. Those courses are free, while the university-funded courses require doctors to pay a fee. UW officials defend the relationship with drug makers.

“All Continuing Medical Education courses at UW are evidence-based, free of commercial bias, and are designed to help physicians provide optimal, state-of-the-art care of patients,” said George Mejicano, director of UW’s office of continuing professional development.

Drug companies spend about $US13 million a year to fund UW medical-education courses, and the university receives about 27 percent, or nearly $US3 million of that money, according to records. The rest is going to private firms that put together the course materials.

Critics say, however, that the practice increases medical costs by encouraging doctors to write prescriptions for expensive brand-name drugs and by exaggerating the frequency and prevalence of rare conditions. It also promotes the use of drugs not approved for the ailments.

“What you are seeing in Wisconsin is just another example of what is going on all over the country,” said Arnold Relman, professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School and a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. “It's unethical, and it is not in the public interest because it is going to bias doctors to use certain drugs.”

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

VCS PAID LESS THAN FOOTBALL STARS

According to the University World News, many British vice-chancellors are paid as much if not more than the British prime minister. But not, of course, as much as premier-league footballers - or failed bankers. Latest figures collated and audited by accountants Grant Thornton on behalf of Times Higher Education show the average university head earned £193,970 in 2007-08. The annual salary of the average premier-league player was £676,000 in 2007.

By comparison, vice-chancellors here in New Zealand, with their average annual remuneration package of $430,000 in 2007, fare slightly better than the prime minister with his annual salary of $395,000. However, they are more closely matched with their sporting counterparts. Wikipedia reports that top All Blacks earned about $500,000 in 2007, with Dan Carter estimated at between $700,000 and $900,000 a year, including endorsements. And cricketers such as Daniel Vettori, Brendon McCullum, and Ross Taylor got between $300,000 and $400,000 from New Zealand Cricket. Those cricketers who participate in the Indian Premier League earn significantly more.

It has been suggested that while the large pay disparity between vice-chancellors and football stars in Britain means that many universities are in danger of losing talented vice-chancellors to the premier league. By contrast, here in New Zealand, vice-chancellor salaries have kept up with those of All Blacks and cricket stars, meaning our tertiary-education institutions are less vulnerable to talent poaching. Even CEOs of some of our polytechnics, with salaries of $190,000 to $300,000, should be able to resist the financial lure of going to play for the Super 14.

Now that we know this top level remuneration issue has been addressed, we can focus more fully on the need to have wages and salaries for other staff in the tertiary-education sector, academic and general, that compare fairly with their overseas counterparts.

From Diane Spencer at University World News

TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz

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