ED is sponsoring the Industry Training Federation’s Vocational Education and Training Research Forum today and tomorrow. The ITF has provided three research summaries that we are running as guest posts - this is the second one. Dr Gavin Moodie of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology is presenting a paper today on New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Policy Compared.

New Zealand tertiary education offers two lessons and a query to an overseas observer. New Zealand is distinctive in defining different types of its tertiary education institutions in legislation. New Zealand’s Education Acthas specified the characteristics of colleges of education, polytechnics, universities and wānanga since the Act was made in 1989 and in 2003 Parliament added specialist colleges as a new type of tertiary education institution. This is distinctive amongst advanced English-speaking countries.

Many US states and Canadian provinces don’t define their different types of tertiary institutions – they simply establish new institutions in the image of the most recently established previous institution of the type they want to establish. Other countries such as Australia and the UK define their tertiary institutions, but in rules and regulations of approval bodies rather than in governing legislation.

The New Zealand Parliament thereby offers a lesson to overseas observers in the clarity with which it distinguishes its tertiary institutions and the expectations it has of them. It is also unusual in preserving and enhancing in legislation institutional autonomy and academic freedom, or intellectual freedom as I suggest it is better called. The New Zealand legislation is highly unusual in extending these privileges and responsibilities to all tertiary institutions, not restricting them to universities as is assumed in most other countries. Many tertiary staff and students in other countries would welcome such support.

New Zealand is also distinctive in having a highly integrated tertiary education system. It has a Minister of Tertiary Education, a Tertiary Education Commission and a tertiary education strategy. New Zealand’s tertiary education funding system is remarkably neutral between public and private organisations and between different types of organisations. The high period in the New Zealand Government’s neutral treatment of tertiary education organisations seems to have been from 1989 to 2006, governed by both the Labour and National parties. Governments of both parties seem to have retreated from a laissez-faire tertiary education system in the last five years, seeking to steer organisations towards their distinctive strengths or at least roles. Nonetheless, New Zealand tertiary education remains distinctively integrated.

In contrast, the federal Canadian and US governments sponsor loans and provide some means tested grants to students which are tenable without discrimination between public and private community and four-year institutions. But institutions have to obtain their capital and general operating funds from elsewhere. Public institutions are funded by state and provincial governments, and governments generally fund community colleges and four year colleges and universities differently. But almost no US state or Canadian province funds private institutions. England funds its analogues of polytechnics through a different council and with different criteria and arrangements from the council that funds higher education. Australia’s analogues of polytechnics are funded mostly by state governments while the federal government funds public but not private higher education institutions.

New Zealand’s second lesson for overseas observers is therefore the extent to which it has an integrated tertiary education system. Furthermore, New Zealand integrates a greater variety of different types of organisations within its tertiary education system. The governments of Australia, Canada, England and the US mostly distinguish just three types of institutions: polytechnic-like colleges, higher education colleges and universities. In contrast New Zealand distinguishes four, five or six types of tertiary education organisation, depending on which text one consults.

The query for an overseas observer is the extent to which New Zealand seeks to distinguish types of organisation and qualifications within its tertiary education system. Arguably an extremely integrated system would fund organisations by type of qualification regardless of what type of organisation is accredited to offer the qualification. New Zealand is apparently seeking to strengthen the distinctive roles of each type of tertiary education organisation, in which case this overseas observer asks: where does New Zealand envisage the trade-off to be between differentiating its types of organisations and qualifications and having an integrated tertiary education system?