One of the big issues in tertiary education last year was whether providers could enrol above their funding cap. Enrolment demand was high due to the recession, while there was slower growth in places than in previous years, so providers were open to getting more funded places (obviously) as well as enrolling unfunded students (mainly because they had low marginal costs but also due to a feeling that it was the right thing to do). The problem for the government was that even unfunded places had student fees, which means student loans, which are funded through extra debt (almost half of which is expensed immediately).

I remember being on Nine to Noon with Anne Tolley last year, when I was representing the ITP sector, and she said that no-one would be allowed to go above their cap, because there was no money budgeted for extra student loan expenditure. It was the first time she’d said that publicly and TEC reinforced that message publicly and privately. I suspected at the time that universities would be given the nod and allowed to over-enrol (and heard some ITPs claim that they had been given leeway too) , but I was assured by TEC that the same message was going out to the whole sector – no exceeding the cap.

Now Roy Crawford, VC at the University of Waikato, has confirmed to The Waikato Times that they enrolled 106% of their cap last year (with 100% being spot on target), whereas the rules only allowed people to enrol up to 103% of their cap. Now did Waikato do this off their own bat or were they given encouragement by the government? And even if they weren’t given encouragement, will they face any sanction? The questions are important because thousands of extra students could have been enrolled last year, but most providers took the government’s statements seriously. If the government doesn’t deal with this, then we can expect a lot more enrolments above the 103% cap in 2010.

I have put in an OIA request on last year’s enrolments and will share them with readers when the answers come through. My guess is that 4-10 TEIs exceeded the 103% cap in 2009.