NZ ITP is the fourth of our pre-budget posts from sector groups – it’s up at 11am today. You might not have seen their website before, so have a look in the interim.

1. Vic’s Poor Management After an unscheduled Council meeting yesterday, Victoria University of Wellington has decided to stop taking any new domestic undergraduate enrolments in 2010. They have gone over their cap, but that should have been clear earlier – I showed a few weeks back that they had 103.2% achievement against cap in 2009, so with pipeline growth plus recession-driven new enrolments they were always going to have difficulty this year. Other universities will probably follow soon. Student news paper Salient  has good background, including that enrolments would have hit 110% without intervention. The Dominion Post points out that 1,500 students will be shut out by the decision. Overall, this has been managed poorly by VUW, which should have made this decision months ago. (Disclosure: I am on the VUWSA Trust, which is closely associated with VUWSA, but have no involvement in these issues.)
2. Science Budget The Science funding announced on Tuesday continues to get coverage, with the Manawatu Daily Standard supporting it in an editorial and pointing out in a story that locals should benefit. The NZ Herald editorial argued yesterday that not enough money was being put into science. As covered in my post yesterday, universities are working together to link with business.
3. Ecotourism Tai Poutini Polytechnic’s Ecotourism branch has signed an MOU with DOC and the Ministry of Tourism.
4. PM @ Tairawhiti, Massey Tairawhiti Polytechnic has put out a media release abut the PM’s visit there. John Key also opened a library at Massey University’s Albany campus recently.
5. World Cup, Rugby, That Is Aoraki Polytechnic is starting to train for it now, but with CEO Kay Nelson being in hospitality training before her current role, you’d expect them to be onto it.
6. Intl Students Up The Press reported yesterday on increasing international student numbers, picking up on an Education NZ newsletter. Te stats came out a few weeks ago.
7. Youth Parliament Two ITP journalism students are part of an 8-strong Press Gallery for July’s Youth Parliament.
8. Otago Corner The ODT is hot on the University of Otago today (must be campus supplemnt day). In brief:
   • social work is vital but the loss-making department may still be closed (how you can lose money training in a boom industry that has recently introduced professional registration, requiring retraining of the existing workforce too,  is beyond me);
   • OUSA is tidying up thier policy book (there are some good ideas, including Web voting for all issues in the future);
   • the Dunedin ICT Internship Programme is expanding – also include Otago Polytechnic (and looks like a good idea) and
   • the University has just joined the Matariki Network of Universities and contributed the name (This looks like a good idea – I got the media release yesterday, which is not yet online)