OK but if it’s good for the tertiary sector it should also apply to Independent schools and Integrated schools.

Stephen, this issue was dealt with about five years ago when Modern Age Institute of Learning went under spectacularly. All PTEs must have student fee protection and most use a Public Trust run system where all student fees are paid into an account and are released on a weekly basis. Since Modern Age, no PTE has closed with students being left greatly out of pocket and very, very few have even hit the papers. None have generated any bad PR that is comparable to what happened in the past. The system does cost but it has removed the main reputational risk issue for PTEs.

Not to mention the problem that most, if not all, public providers cross subsidise internally so that ordinary New Zealanders with talent can consider careers in science and some of the other incredibly expensive subjects rather than everyone being forced to be lawyers or accountants because they earn more (but produce nothing of value – so much for economic growth). Some PTE’s are excellent, but full competition would see a rush to provide the cheap high volume courses (Business IT anyone?) while leaving the taxpayer to cover the remaining cost.

The problem I have with the pure economic approach that seems to be being pushed on these pages at the moment is that you’re inconsistent. If pure economics drives everything then why are we talking about special cases for young people or Maori? If someone older has the money why not? If Maori students need expensive support to remediate woeful performance as a demographic why not make them pay more rather than give them special treatment?

Why can’t you admit the vital role that public education plays in the good of a nation – its so important that it should be treated specially by the Government – private business won’t carry social outcomes unless we the taxpayer pay a healthy profit for it. Personally I don’t want our education system to turn into a commercial free for all with a limited range of cut-price providers operating out of tax shelters offering barely adequate basics while everyone with talent and/or money runs to Australia as fast as they can (and who’ll pay for the subsidies for under-represented groups then?).

Reading Joyce’s speech left me with the sense that some of the ideas were reasonable and I agree that New Zealand’s public tertiary providers benefit from political oversight, but that is a long way from agreeing with the proposition that the free market will magically deliver a high functioning, efficient and reasonably priced education system – give me any evidence at all that it has worked anywhere without the society as a whole already being wealthy and well-educated.

Hi Dave, a fuller debate at some point would be good. I guess I’m responding to the constant public-sector bashing I see in the comments here. The reality is that the public education sector in New Zealand generates a very well-regarded set of qualifications at a very low cost (provided you don’t make simple-minded comparisons using the total student loan cost – most of that is living expenses not the direct cost of the education itself). I just recently visited a mid range Australian university that thanks to their funding environment is right now undertaking $200 million in capital works to improve campus facilities – and it is not a special event for them, just the latest in a long run of investment by Australia in its future…

There is a practical problem with all of this public v private stuff. Sure, the pure argument (level playing field, let the market rule etc) is attractive on the surface. But the reality is that the playing field is not level.

A private for-profit provider will think and act like a business and in doing so will cherry-pick, go fo the high volume/low cost courses. Public institutions can’t do that, they have a wider mandate.

The reality is that public institutions can’t compete with a commercially-minded and driven provider. In fact if they start to, they get into serious trouble a la Cool-IT. Why? Precisely because they have acted like a commercial operation.

In addition, if you allow for-profit providers to operate ‘equally’ they will cherry pick and in doing so will marginalise the operation of public institutions.

In short if a public institution acts like private organisation it gets clobbered and if a private organisation acts like a public institution it will probably not make any money.

“You have to get Quality Assurance right”

Now if only we could do proper double-blind tests… tell me what QA system actually measures the benefit experienced by an individual student that they would or would not get from studying at a given provider X as opposed to Y? Everything else, particularly the current set of indicators, measures “activity” or input costs. ‘Quality’ in higher education is a political construct reflecting the stakeholders with power. I think this is the real issue underlying much of the debate here, its easy to describe things that are poor quality, particularly after the fact, while comprehensively describing good quality is probably not possible. As far as I can tell, what the Government wants at the moment is ‘cheap’ – a workforce educated enough to work in factories but not too smart because then they might ask difficult questions, with a much reduced university sector educating the well off (with a light sprinkling of minorities to deflect any residual tough questions).

Must be getting late, my cynicism is on a higher setting than normal…

Dean, I agree that the idea there is some master plan is laughable (and would be unworkable in detail anyway – the world moves to fast and too much of the environment is determined by folk in the US/EU) but that doesn’t prevent an ideological slant on decision making and analysis (I do it all the time, so do Governments – its called politics).

Going back to the topic of QA – you (and others lurking) might find these articles interesting:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a713678146

http://www.unc.edu/ppaq/docs/CEQ_final.pdf

They both point out systemic flaws in the QA systems use in Australia, which are arguably much better developed than NZ ones. Interestingly, the only solution the first paper identifies to the problem of improving the quality of analysis is to remove institutional competition from the mix – something that will never happen in market-driven systems.