A few years back I was brainstorming with a group about what export education research needed to be done in NZ. Someone suggested that we should replicate the farming model and set up something similar to monitor farms where people could go and learn what works and why in the industry. A story about the Whatawhata Hill Country Research Station reminded me of that conversation, as the operators are seeking to turn it into a demonstration farm, focusing on one topic at a time, rather than the systemic focus of the monitor farms.

What made me sad about that story was that we have neither the systemic or the topical exemplars that operate in agriculture, and sector performance suffers as a result. One of the reasons for that is that everyone is “different”. We can all pick a statistic that we do well on and laud that to the exclusion of the others (and we all do that picking and choosing), but there isn’t enough focus on simple, meaningful outcome indicators. That’s why I’m supportive of the government’s focus on performance reporting. Of course the start date and/or the data quality will be downgraded by positioning over the next few months, but it points us in the right direction of focusing on what tertiary education students achieve with their time and money (and taxpayers’ money).