New Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce was on Morning Report today. He was preceded by a report on the government’s push for trade training.

The lead-in report covered Business NZ’s Phil O’Reilly (we need more choices), the ITF’s Jeremy Baker (vocational quals need to lead to a job – let’s ensure value for money), the PPTA’s Kate Gainsford (don’t make students specialise too early), and Auckland University’s CK Stead (trades are important, but so are other things, so lets get the balance right).  It’s probably not worth listening to if you have a busy day.

Steven Joyce’s opening line was that he was “dangerously qualified” after a week in the job, so at least he has a sense of humour. But he quickly pointed to growth in funding from $1.2b 10 years ago to $2.6b now, and the need to ensure that money is being spent in the best way. That is boiler plate stuff, but he went on to focus on student completions and graduate outcomes, and showed some understanding of the complexities of those measures. There was then a long discussion about qualifications, but the takeaway point is that this Minister seems as committed as the last one to reducing the number of local qualifications. Not much to say at this stage other than that he seems to be listening, doing a lot of reading and thinking about the issues.

Incidentally, the TEU put out a media release on Tuesday claiming that National was targeting ITPs when they talked about courses with high dropouts. I think that goes too far, as PTEs and wananga are just as likely to have courses with high dropout rates (as are ITOs for that matter). PTEs have got more attention than others from the TEC in recent years for high dropout courses, and many have lost funding, but they still have some issues. I’d expect any real push on poorly performing courses to have a wide impact on the tertiary education sector.  590ff27102ec