1. NZITP Op-Ed James Buwalda of NZITP, a group representing 14 ITPs, had an opinion piece published yesterday on Stuff. One of the commenters on the story gave a harsh review of it, saying that it didn’t convey a clear opinion, but I assume it’s a soft piece designed to rehabilitate ITPs. BY itself, I don’t think it does very much, but it does clearly position NZITP as a group that wants to work with the government, not against it, on issues like qualifications changes.
2. Feelgood Story of the Week Robert Stubbs of Gisborne has completed a National Certificate in Civil Construction Works – Forestry Earthworks L3 through Infratrain, which covers building forest roads and pipe culverts. “Stubbsy” has also become a registered assessor for Infratrain. The feelgood part is that he lost the use of his legs after a motocross accident in 2007 and now operates a modified 4WD to get onto site and uses a modified bulldozer once he’s there. Infratrain has been flexible to help him achieve his qualification while the guy obviously has great determination. The only bum note is that Infratrain didn’t have this story in the newsletter they sent me yesterday, even though the qual achievement was noted on the last page! Of course, they may well have already covered him in the past.
3. Separating Sheep I covered the Lincoln student who won at Fieldays with a new sheep sorting gate yesterday, but The Gisborne Herald has run a nice story on him as it turns out he was previously at the Waipaoa Station, a training farm near Gisborne.
4. Stuart Middleton Stuart wrote a good post yesterday about the problem in reporting everything by percentages when the real number of students being educated consistently goes down over time.
5. Partying Students The Press ran a story yesterday saying that Kiwi students party and work harder than Australian ones - the Aussies do more paid work. It was based on the Australasian Survey of Student Engagement.
6. Gordon on Access Liz Gordon of QPEC rails against restrictions on university access. She accuses the Vice-Chancellors of misusing statistics and then simply makes up some of her own in the same paragraph (I’m not kidding).
7. UCOL in China A UCOL partnership with the Guangzhou Vocational  School of Tourism and Business and Guangzhou School of Fine Arts is paying off with a group of cookery students coming over for as year shortly and another group of art students coming for a one week tour to check out UCOL.
8. Otago Poly The ODT reports on the first meeting of Otago Polytechnic’s new Council, but there are no details in that story. Another story states that international students’ fees will go up 7-11% for 2011.
9. Cellphones in Class There’s a wee story here about using cellphones to allow students to ask questions in class.
10. Massey Advisors 3 new people are joining Massey’s College of Business Advisory Board.
11. KAREN Awards 8 people have won KAREN Awards, with 6 from VUW and 1 from AUT.
12. All Whites A University of Otago researcher is reviewing media coverage of the World Cup, which may be the most inventive excuse to skive off work this month.
13. Grant Robertson Grant Robertson (Labour) was on TV1′s Q+A on Sunday and I’ve provided an excerpt of the interview below (Paul Holmes spent most of his time on expense scandals and being a gay MP). Grant seems keen to take on Joyce.

PAUL Are you intimidated by the idea of sparring with Steven Joyce on Tertiary Education?

GRANT ROBERTSON – Labour MP
Oh no not at all, I think there’s a lot of issues in Tertiary Education, very important part of our economy and our society. At the moment we’ve got universities shutting the door on new enrolments, Steven Joyce is standing there like a bystander at a car accident, and I think I need to take him on on that.

PAUL Well couldn’t we make the case there are far too many students, far too many silly courses, far too much expectation that a degree in something will get a job when it isn’t going to?

GRANT Oh tertiary education should be seen as the engine room of the economy, and we look across the Tasman, in Australia they’ve invested over a billion dollars extra into tertiary education in the last two budgets. I think it’s a real opportunity for us and shouldn’t be locking students out, we should be getting them in.