Should There Be Other Tertiary Education Providers?

June 24th 2010 at 3:10pm, By Dave Guerin

Other Tertiary Education Providers (OTEPs) are the miscellaneous category in tertiary education – and they’re going to disappear soon as the TEC tidies up the categories. From my understanding, they’ll mostly be treated as PTEs or community education providers from next year, although some of the statutory bodies (Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre and the Institute of Professional Legal Studies) could feasibly become specialist colleges – a category of tertiary education institution that has never been used. Up until now, OTEPs have been treated separately and often had different funding arrangements (although these have mostly been normalised over the years)

I don’t have a fixed view on the matter, largely because the OTEPS have quite unique situations, but I’d be keen to hear what others think. Should there be a miscellaneous category for organisations that don’t quite fit the mould?

The current OTEPs are listed below (although I think the NZ School of Dance should be there too – might be reported under the Drama School):

Te Kura Toi Whakaari o Aotearoa: NZ Drama School
Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre
NZ Playcentre Federation
Institute of Professional Legal Studies
Te Kohanga Reo National Trust Board
Literacy Aotearoa
Te Tai Puna Ora O Aotearoa/ NZ Childcare Assn

Disclosure: I did some work for Taratahi last year, but not on this issue.

(1) Comment
Tags: Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre, TEC
Categories: OTEPs

1 Response to Should There Be Other Tertiary Education Providers?

Stephen Day

June 30th, 2010 at 9:08 am

My personal perspective is that the tertiary sector is similar to the early childhood sector in terms of structure. That is there are three main types of institutions: public/state institutions (e.g. kindys c.f. uni’s and polys), private-for-profits and private community-run institutions. The important distinction here is not what they are teaching/researching but who owns them and for what purpose. Most OTEPs are more comparable to community-owned organisations that for-profit privates. They probably have more in common with a small wānanga. That means they are likely to need a different type of oversight and management by the government than that needed for other PTEs. My personal perspective is that the tertiary sector is similar to the early childhood sector in terms of structure. That is there are three main types of institutions: public/state institutions (e.g. kindys c.f. uni’s and polys), private-for-profits and private community-run institutions. The important distinction here is not what they are teaching/researching but who owns them and for what purpose. Most OTEPs are more comparable to community-owned organisations that for-profit privates. They probably have more in common with a small wānanga. That means they are likely to need a different type of oversight and management by the government than that needed for other PTEs.