News 4/8 – Cap Impact at Waikato, Performance Funding

August 4th 2010 at 9:30am, By Dave Guerin

Hamilton’s the Place to Summer The University of Waikato has not made any cuts to its summer school due to funding caps, but that mainly seems to be because the summer school starts in January 2011. Waikato Uni has, however, closed a personal financial planning course, which was eligible for financial adviser registration purposes, due to its cap.
Performance Funding Steven Joyce released the main criteria for performance funding yesterday. Labour’s Grant Robertson thinks it runs the risk of being a compliance exercise, but doesn’t actually say it is, before moving onto access issues. The Greens’ Gareth Hughes says that the new approach is a failure and the answer is more funding (the main focus of the release). The TEU fooled me by heading up their media release “Education can’t be funded on employment outcomes” – Labour and the Greens used the announcement as a springboard onto another issue, whereas it seemed the TEU just decided to talk about something else altogether from the start (Joyce’s release does not mention employment outcomes). But the TEU was even more cunning, because their media release not only has a clear analysis of the risks of performance funding, but it doesn’t even mention employment outcomes after the title.
University Funding NZUSA’s David Do and NZVCC’s Derek McCormack were on Close Up last night.
Wine EIT has a new wine man (viticulture lecturer), from UC at Davis (I know a librarian there…in case you wanted to know). Anyway, he likes the local Syrah, which will put him onside with the CE, Chris Collins!
PTE Closures? NZQA threatened 42 PTEs with deregistration or conditions upon registration in late July. With the deadline passed on 2 August, 5 PTEs remained on the non-complying list.
ITPQ Update A few weeks back I explored NZQA’s potential takeover of ITPQ. I noted that Telford had had its Quality Assured Status removed by ITPQ for some time but it was the only ITP with no audit report provided for it. ITPQ has now provided a short update here, but have still not provided an audit report or any detail about Telford’s failings.
Legal Eagle Law geeks will be happy that Australian judge Michael Kirby is speaking at the University of Canterbury this week.
Otago Corner Restructuring of Otago Uni’s College of Education is continuing, with a revised proposal released. A uni academic is thinking about solar aurora, while a Poly chef is making kebabs
Beautiful Whanganui Beauty therapy courses are booming at UCOL Whanganui, with 38 students enrolled.
CheerleadersSIT not only sponsors Southland’s rugby team, but also a cheerleading troupe.
Brazilian Theatre and Mayors A group of Unitec grads, students and tutors have just got back from performing theatre in Brazil. Unitec also hosted a forum of super-city mayoral candidates last night.
Tsunami Warning If there’s a tsunami, don’t spend the day at Bay of Plenty Poly’s Windermere campus – it’s right in the likely path. Just so you know.
Research A third of the deaths of pregnant women in Wellington were preventable, according to an Otago Uni study (detail is here). On a slightly related note, intending penguin mums prefer future dads to be fat, according to an Auckland Uni researcher.
NMIT Profile I missed this story from about ten days ago, but there’s a good profile of NMIT’s issues in the Nelson Mail.
Selling the Cows This is an older US story, but many colleges there are selling their cows as they can no longer afford to keep them due to rising costs and lower prices.
Jewellery An MIT jewellery student is one of several exhibiting in a graduate show.

2 Responses to News 4/8 – Cap Impact at Waikato, Performance Funding

August 4th, 2010 at 10:11 am

Hi Dave,

In the rush to get our media release out it accidentally acquired an old title from a previous release. It was supposed to read “Dangers in linking funding to performance”. Apologies for the confusion that caused.