Education Directions

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Unemployment Up, Enrolments ?

February 4th 2010 at 1:26pm, By Dave Guerin

The Household Labour Force Survey Dec 09 figures were released by Stats NZ this morning, with a big jump in unemployment to 7.3%, up 0.8% for the quarter. This is a very big shift – at the end of 08, most economists thought that unemployment would top out in the low 6% area, and earlier this week, they were picking 6.8%.

The tertiary education angle is that there will be continued high pressure for places in tertiary education this month. While the Survey released today showed that tertiary education participation was only up 2.3% from Dec 08 to Dec 09, more precise figures will start flowing from the TEC and providers in the next few weeks. I’ll provide updates as they arrive.

6 Responses to Unemployment Up, Enrolments ?

Anatole Bogatski

February 5th, 2010 at 2:43 pm

Thanks Dave
good info and I agree the high unemployment stat will translate into higher applications for tertiary places. Question is will government fund these places or maintain the caps, in which case the higher demand will effectively put pressure on ITP, university and PTE resources and possibly lead to erosion in standards (higher teacher/student ratios, etc).

Dave Guerin

February 6th, 2010 at 9:00 am

Ta Anatole – good to hear from you. I can’t see the government funding much growth, given their low new spending cap in the Budget. They will struggle simply to inflation adjust funding (which they may or may not continue). It will be interesting to see how tightly the TEC’s 103% cap on enrolments was policed in 2009 when the year end figures come out shortly. That is a cheaper way for the govt to boost places, but they seem very wary of even incurring the student loans for unfunded places.

Anatole Bogatski

February 6th, 2010 at 1:12 pm

Thanks Dave
My understanding is that at this point TEC does not control the StudyLink loans and allowances. This is not a feature of the TEC Investment Plan. Any student that is a NZ or Australian resident can apply and is able to receive these funds irrespective of any separate TEC cap on EFTS funded places. This will be a key relationship to monitor in the future. If this changes, there will be real equity issue (accessibility to tertiary education) to consider.

Dave Guerin

February 6th, 2010 at 4:19 pm

Providers can sign up more students but TEC can sanction providers that go over 103% (ie 3% over cap). There was a bit of bluffing last year but in the end the TEC and the Minister were very clear that they wanted people to stay within their cap. It will be interesting soon to see if anyone defied that ruling or if they got quiet approval to do so. And after the results come in, will anyone be ‘punished’?

Karen Houston

February 10th, 2010 at 10:54 am

Hi Dave, TEC continue to miss a number of key factors in their efforts to cap enrolments and thus $$$ spent on loans and allowances. 1 EFTS is not an equal measure of how much the government has invested in a student, bearing in mind that an EFT can be anything from a 24 week to a full year of study, thus the student allowance cost will vary considerably. And the cost of the loans vary massively from around $5k per eft to as much as $13k! Shouldn’t TEC be measuring the dollar value investment in each provider rather than the bare enrolment numbers, which don’t tell the whole story?!

Dave Guerin

February 10th, 2010 at 12:13 pm

Hi Karen, personally I’d rather drive it by results of some sort, like qual completions and graduates outcomes, which could be linked to cost as well. The main problem right now though is that the government is bearing almost all the costs of any growth, and it is short of cash. Freeing up providers to enrol extra students without funding would at least reduce some pressure at a limited cost (and would probably lead to expansion in short, cheaper programmes).

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