This is the tertiary education news beat for today – upcoming posts today will cover booming enrolments and the new(ish) Tertiary Education Strategy.

1. Darel Hall’s first post for ED Blog yesterday went viral after it was picked up by Russell Brown at Public Address - welcome to the hundreds of new readers and congrats to Darel on a great debut.
2. A lovely graduation story from Waiariki Institute of Technology covers a new mum who had her baby in class for the first six weeks – obviously lovely classmates and tutors too!
3. There were five female moas to each male one, according to a Marsden Fund-backed University of Canterbury team, mainly because female moa were bigger and kept the best food areas. The Marsden Fund backs blue skies research, so don’t expect immediate application from this project (or resurrected moas).
4. The Te Wananga o Aotearoa waka was up at Waitangi at the weekend.
5. NMIT is launching a new KiaOraMai programme designed for entry-level employees working across the range of service industries, including hospitality, accommodation, travel and transport, tourism events and activities, retail, hairdressing, beauty and spa. It has been developed with Ministry of Tourism funding by the Tourism Industry Assn and SITA, the Services Industries Training Alliance (which includes ATTTO, HSI, HITO, Retail Institute, Skills Active, and Tranzqual). NMIT is one of the first providers, while its good to see SITA working well as a group of industry training organisations.
6. In overseas news, the University of Phoenix has a 2-year degree offshoot, Axia College, with 200,000 students, that appears to compete directly with community colleges (Phoenix’s main operation targets mature students). There’s an interesting comparison (well, for me anyway). HT AACC