Student services fees may have had the early running as an issue out of Steven Joyce’s tertiary education policy speech on Wednesday, but the graduate outcomes issue has surged into the lead.  In the process, Joyce is showing off his political skills.

You can pick up some of the coverage in this morning’s news post, but it includes the NZVCC Chair, Derek McCormack, being concerned about universities becoming “more and more like an employment agency” (of course, they have run a graduate destinations survey for decades as a marketing tool…) and an ITP CE saying it was impractical (of course, many ITPs put out annual releases about their nursing graduates having a 100% employment rate…). People have certainly been getting outraged. Most amusingly, a philosophy PhD student argued that philosophy degrees developed great skills but universities would cut them because grads had poor job prospects – The Dim-Post, a blog, nicely skewers this in a post title p does not imply q (one of my fine FB friends also rebutted the rather illogical argument). Personally, my philosophy studies were a great preparation for working life, while I think Derek studied theology at one stage too!

Two economics blogs, Offsetting Behaviour and The Visible Hand in Economics, have both posted on the issue today. They’re well worth a read (on this or any issue).

Most importantly though, everyone has been nicely diverted by an issue that’s not really on the agenda. If you read Joyce’s speech, he said that: “Ultimately, I want to see funding linked to employment outcomes, not just internal benchmarks.” That wasn’t that strong a statement and, in answer to a question after the speech, he specifically said that he was relying on course and qualification completions because employment data wasn’t available and graduate surveys weren’t as reliable as the other data. He backed away quite quickly from any implementation of the idea, including any suggestion that the Minister would pick and choose subjects.

Joyce has said more since then, but you have to admire a Minister who went into a speech with the main public issue being current caps on enrolments and steered the debate completely the other way. The first 24 hours focused on universities and ITPs screwing students and the government through extra fees, while the second 24 hours has focused on providers attacking employment outcomes as a measure of their performance. Not only has the focus shifted from the government and onto providers making rather awkward defences, but it has shifted to a potential policy that is years away. I thought Joyce would be good, but this is a great political lesson. Next we’ll be talking about whether Martian ecology should be funded in 2050.

PS did anyone else notice that there has been no public comment at all over what is coming up next month that will change the tertiary education scene dramatically over time: the public release of performance data…? I rest my case.