News 9 Mar – University Entry, VSM & Biodiesel

March 9th 2010 at 8:04am, By Dave Guerin

The NZ Herald waded into tertiary education today, supporting Steven Joyce’s suggestion to limit student loans according to academic performance and the University of Auckland’s proposal to limit university access as well (and use extra money to increase subsidies). There was a related Radio NZ discussion on this last week that covered NZQA’s upcoming review of university entry - including VCs Steve Maharey (Massey) and Stuart McCutcheon (Auckland), NZUSA’s David Do and QPEC’s Liz Gordon.
The NZ Herald is running a series on export education at the moment, starting with a piece yesterday on market size. Today they’ve covered the non-monetary value of international students and non-traditional courses, but the stories seem a bit insubstantial.
Ako Aotearoa has released a few reports on mentoring of Pasifika students, the work of new academics and peer mentoring of distance students.
Pansy Wong, Minister of Women’s Affairs, has released research that shows that pay gender gaps start soon after graduation – more work is planned.
Otago Polytechnic has supported the development of a biodiesel consortium in Queenstown.
Victoria University student newspaper has a suite of stories on voluntary student membership - more than you ever wanted to read probably.
The Open Polytechnic is partnering with Sovereign for the new training for financial advisers.
TEC is checking ITOs’ operations to see what regulatory compliance/health and safety courses they are running. This follows up on a decision last year to stop funding such courses. Similar checking occurred with ITPs last year.