Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki (WITT) needs to generate a surplus of 3% of revenue this year and next if they are to bed down their debt writeoff, according to the Taranaki Daily News. With a drop of $2.2m in funding next year after one-off funds end, WITT has started consultation with staff – it is looking at enrolment increases, fee increases and staff reductions.

As I wrote earlier in the week, the funding crunch for ITPs this year will be tough as they got a lot of extra money in this investment plan cycle that was targeted at transition or simply covering losses, whereas the Government now wants to fund results, rather than organisations. ITPs like WITT will have to make a strong case to make one-off funds into baseline, while fending off a sceptical TEC and Ministers, and other sectors putting up their own cases for the money (eg PTEs arguing for equal funding, universities arguing for research and quality provision, and ITOs arguing for productivity). My guess is that the government will keep the financial pressure on ITPs during this year, but I don’t see them (yet) going as far as they have with DHBs by implementing a forced common services model.