Steven Joyce, Minister of Tertiary Education, has made announcements today that tertiary tuition funding will be linked to performance and confirmed decisions about the targeted review of qualifications. More importantly, he made a big speech.

The Speech

Joyce’s speech gives a clear sense of where he is coming from and how he will operate – that’s important because it his first formal statement on tertiary education. There are also some comments on linking student loans to academic progress, repeating earlier views. You should read it, but some of his final words provide a good example of his thoughts.

I don’t see radical change on the cards.  What we need is a continued evolution to a more effective and efficient tertiary system that makes the very best use of the $4 billion we taxpayers contribute to it.

The Announcements

The funding announcement doesn’t really amount to much. Performance from this year on will be linked to funding from 2012 onwards. The things being measured are likely to be qualification completion, successful course completion and student progression to further study. To me though, he has hedged things – poor performers will “run the risk of losing funding”, or will not be funded “at the same level” and the amount at risk will “be low to start with so everyone has time to adjust”.

The performance funding policy could be very significant, but only if it is firm and simple. Grant Hodgson and Jim Doyle discussed this in comments last Friday, pointing out that the more complicated the system, the more it comes down to how good you are at interpreting the rules. We can quickly get mired in how everything is complicated and unique, whereas Joyce’s starting point is value for money. I hope he keeps the focus simple as the sector and officials attempt to complicate it.

On qualifications, Joyce mainly restated announcements that NZQA made in December, but now seem to have been approved by Cabinet. He did name a start date for the NZ Qualifications Framework – July 2010.