Tertiary Education's Sub-Zero Budget

Tertiary education's sub-zero budget

Last week's Budget delivered a slight decrease in funding for tertiary education, down from $4 billion last year to $3.9 billion this year. Treasury forecasts that funding will continue to remain below 2009 levels ($4.5 billion) through until at least 2016, while student numbers will continue to remain higher than 2009 levels.

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Council votes to save cultural, film and theatre studies

The University of Canterbury’s council has voted to retain two courses that the vice-chancellor and his management team had wanted to close. After a public campaign by students and staff at the university, the council voted last night to retain Theatre and Film Studies by nine votes to eight and the Cultural Studies programme by eight votes to seven.

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Ministry of Education states a narrow intent

The Ministry of Education will have just two priorities to drive its work for the next five years according to a Statement of Intent it published last week: (a) to improve education outcomes for Māori learners, Pasifika learners, learners with special education needs and learners from low socio-economic backgrounds, and (b) to maximise the contribution of education to the economy.

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Government flies blind on workforce planning

Last May the government used the Budget to crack down on people collecting huge loans to become pilots. It restricted loans for aviation students and capped provider fees at be capped at $40,000 per student. It also prevented people from using their student loans for solo flight hours.

By October last year the government scrapped all those changes.

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Vocational training savaged in Victoria, AU

It was meant to be the most significant shake-up to vocational education in Victoria, Australia, in years: a new demand-driven system where public TAFE institutes (the equivalent of polytechnics) competed for funding with private providers, and where almost anyone who wanted to "up-skill" would be guaranteed a subsidised place.

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PBRF changes employment practice

TEU's branch co-president at Otago University Dr Brent Lovelock says PBRF is affecting the role of academic staff.

“PBRF means that staff are now much busier in terms of doing research, so whether they dedicate as much time to things like lecture planning, I don’t know. And community service? Pfft, it’s dropped off the edge somewhere!”

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TEU advises on release of PBRF scores

TEU has just released advice for members who are required to sign institutional protocols for the release of individual PBRF Quality Category information

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A $40 annual fee on student loans has been introduced with little publicity, in a move the Government hopes will raise $20 million in revenue. The fee has come out of the blue for some borrowers while the Union of Students' Associations (NZUSA) has called the lack of coverage surprising - The New Zealand Herald

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Foundation Focussed Training Opportunities (FFTO) providers could be facing a huge 37 percent cut in a couple of years. Papers for Vote Social Development show that the cut is planned for Vocational Skills Training from 2014-15 - Ed Blog

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Caitlin Davies has been forced to add thousands of dollars in student loan debt and take on extra hours of part-time work so that she can finish her masters degree - Stuff

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Australian higher education is often seen as a female-friendly industry, with overall numbers of both female students and academic staff outnumbering men. Yet women remain a minority as senior academics. In 2009 only a quarter of appointments to positions above the level of associate professor went to women. So what happens to all those women toiling away as tutors and lecturers and researchers when it comes time to move up? Do they simply lose interest or does something else get in the way? - The Conversation

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“Skills have become the global currency of the 21st century, but this currency can depreciate if it isn’t used” -Andreas Schleicher, deputy director for education at the OECD.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License. 2012 Tertiary Education Union

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