News 24/6 – Falling Demand? Not Dr Fujimori. Homepathy Scandal.

June 24th 2010 at 8:16am, By Dave Guerin

Superb Competition Victoria University has just finished a great project involving one of my old lecturers. Vic students led each of 68 teams made up of students from throughout the world who met online and developed business proposals. The winning team had a plan for Kenyan villages to create cosmetics out of a grain. It’s just a wonderful idea for the international business facilitation course.
Demand to Fall Steven Joyce was reporting on Budget issues ot the Education and Science Committee at Parliament yesterday. NZPA and Radio NZ both posted stories, focusing on his argument that demand was going to fall in the next year or two, which would relieve access pressure. Grant Robertson later asked an oral question in the House and put out a rather exaggerated media release as a result. Stuff ran a story on the issues this morning. I was also at the committee session and will report in ED Insider as part of a weekly report on Parliament. Initially, I’d say the facts of this issue matter less than the key messages and tone each side is trying to convey.
WITT Enrolments Down In a curious coincidence, WITT’s enrolments are 10% down on the same time last year, but they’re still confident of getting to 100% by year end – last year they did 100.3%. In discussions about high ITP enrolments, it’s worth remembering that 10/20 had under 101% enrolments last year and only 5/20 went over 103%.
Unis Need Money Pat Walsh, Victoria University VC, had an opinion piece in yesterday’s Dominion Post arguing that money should go to universities rather than interest-free student loans.
Fujimori Out of Favour Lincoln University has revoked the honorary doctorate it gave to Alberto Fujimori, former Peruvian President, after his April conviction on charges relating to killings and kidnappings. Good on them, although I wonder about the decision in the first place – the events that he was convicted of could easily have been imagined in 1998, when the doctorate was granted, as he had forcibly put down the Shining Path rebellion. That was the time to worry about the University’s values, which he is apparently now deemed to have transgressed.
Homeopathy Scandal There is uproar over a 2-hour homeopathy lecture being offered by Victoria University through its continuing education group – well, the Dom Post seems upset and the Science Dean says it has “no support from his faculty.
SIT Courses Cut? The TEC is moving to stop funding for courses with completion rates under 30%, according to this report of an SIT Council meeting. Sounds like a good idea to me – if 70% fail, you’re stuffing up something over entry standards, teaching or assessment and wasting people’s time and money.
BOPP OK Bay of Plenty Polytechnic has done well in the first external evaluation and review in the ITP sector, getting a highly confident rating.
Is Curriculum History? Two Maori university academics are calling for a review of the school history curriculum to fill gaps that it has in Maori history.
Science I was wondering why Sir Peter Gluckman was giving a speech on 250 years of NZ-UK scientific cooperation in London, but then I read the opening para and realised he was really over there for the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society. I guess scientists are much like politicians finding any excuse to go to a sporting event.
Good Books AUP is having a good week, with four books in the New Zealand Post Book Awards.
Maori Dance There’s a Unitec involvement in a Maori contemporary dance festival at Te Papa this week.
Quantum Memory A University of Otago researcher is part of a team that has developed the longest quantum memory of light (yet). You may not understand the value of that (I didn’t), but the media release tells all and is worth a quick skim (hint, it helps supercomputing and communications).
MIT Cakes A nice story here on MIT students making amazing cakes - I wish I could do it! And another nice story on MIT’s community gardening courses.
Scarfies at Risk ? Otago’s Channel 9 did a vox pop on whether the University of Otago was trying to do away with scarfie culture.

1 Response to News 24/6 – Falling Demand? Not Dr Fujimori. Homepathy Scandal.

June 29th, 2010 at 3:14 pm

I’m pleased Lincoln’s removed Fujimori’s degree. This will vindicate the many people who protested him getting it in the first instance (disclosure I worked at Lincoln at the time he was given the degree but had nothing to do with the decision nor did I know anything about Fujimori at the time).