News 10 Mar – Joyce’s big bang, great gardens and science prizes

March 10th 2010 at 8:09am, By Dave Guerin

Steven Joyce, Minister of Tertiary Education, made announcements yesterday that tertiary tuition funding will be linked to performance (5-10% will be at risk), confirmed decisions about the targeted review of qualifications and repeated recent musings about limiting student loan access. He also made his first major speech. I commented yesterday on announcements. Reaction to the Minister has been swift!
- The ITF says that the qualifications review is overdue (the only group to comment on it!).
- Maryan Street of Labour says that performance funding will incentivise grade inflation.
- NZUSA is worried that providers won’t offer students extra study support and that students will lose loan access.
- The TEU managed to make it about staff salaries, besides covering grade inflation and the need to support students.
- NZPA was first off the blocks on coverage, but The Press and the NZ Herald have covered it this morning.
- Radio NZ had Maryan Street and Derek McCormark (AUT VC) on Checkpoint last night. Derek pointed to risks of grade inflation (as did Maryan) and discrimination against risky students.
- TV3 covered the issue last night.
- The Standard, a blog, has opinion and comments.
Northtec student Katie Hilford has been named Ellerslie International Flower Show Student Designer of the Year - her design is pictured. Lincoln University landscape architecture student and All Black Andy Ellis won a gold award at the Ellerslie Flower Show with fellow student Danny Kamo. In a win for ACE, the photography award winner at the show started off with a basic photography course at the University of Canterbury.
The PM announced the PM’s Science Prize winners yesterday. The top winners were from CRI Industrial Research Limited, but five prizes were given out. The prizes are substantial, totalling $1m, and provide a strong signal of science’s importance. The main site is here.
University of Otago enrolments are up 5.2% at this stage of the year and they expect to exceed the 103% limit by year end. In largely unrelated news, a car drove into one of the University’s student flats.
Five Chinese students were arrested yesterday in relation to a major drug smuggling bust, with materials worth up to $3m.

(2) Comments
Tags: Performance funding, Science, Student Loans and Allowances, Targeted Review of Qualifications
Categories: Export Education|Funding|Quality Assurance|Students

2 Responses to News 10 Mar – Joyce’s big bang, great gardens and science prizes

Darel Hall

March 10th, 2010 at 9:08 am

As I remember it we were both involved in Labour’s attempt to introduce performance element to funding, were both supportive of the attempt (OBVIOUSLY me a little more mildly) and I for one was frustrated by even the small marginal funding impact (although, of course, marginal funding is important) not being introduced.

There is an issue about how lesser privileged people get into universities, in particular, but much of that solution must be earlier in the education system. That doesn’t absolve universities of their particular responsibilities though.

I suspect that a politically clever solution will marry a performance element with a clearer approach to university course preparation responsibilities that will dampen some of the reasonable downsides identified.