The policy changes all seem pretty sensible, as the consensus is that the science reforms of the early 1990s went too far by making CRI funding too contestable, diverting focus from long-term capability to short-term chasing of funding. The other changes should make CRIs more focused on end-users, rather than officials, and could lead to a surge in innovation in NZ (I just made up that last part).

But if I was a university Vice-Chancellor, I might be a bit worried. CRIs are going to get more core funding, so will be able to boost their core capability. They will have a shiny new Statement of Core Purpose that will probably attract more funding, and they are going to be encouraged to be closer to end-users. Unlike universities, they will also be much more under the control of Ministers, so may be seen as a safer bet for future investment. All of these things are going to help CRIs in getting businesses’ and officials’ support in bidding for new funding. There won’t be a wholesale shift of funding, but CRIs are likely to improve their share of new funding over the next few years.

The area of potential for universities is that CRIs are expected to collaborate more with other research institutions. The NZVCC specifically referred to a requirement  in the Taskforce report for CRIs to collaborate with others in a media release in early March, but I don’t think the change will come to much. Universities and CRIs already collaborate a lot anyway, and I’d expect CRIsto roll current collaboration into the mix and avoid doing too much more. Collaboration was really quite a small part of the Taskforce’s work and is unlikely to be a big priority for Ministers.

One thing that the media haven’t picked up yet, to my knowledge, is that almost all of the decisions were probably made before the Taskforce’s report was released on 4 March. You see, Wayne Mapp released a Cabinet paper yesterday that advised that the Taskforce’s report be accepted other than a couple of minor matters. Most of the text is exactly the same as the Minister’s media release. And that Cabinet paper was clearly written in February or very early March because it referred to plans for releasing the Taskforce report. The only major thing left to be done in that February Cabinet paper was the MORST/FRST merger, announced last week.

1. CRI Changes The Government has broadly agreed to the changes proposed by the Crown Research Institutes Taskforce a few weeks ago.
2. Open Entry The NZ Listener is running a story in next week’s edition on open entry. Here’s a link, but fulltext won’t be available online for a fortnight. They start off by focusing on the University of Auckland’s entry policy.

1. CRI Taskforce A big report was released yesterday reviewing Crown Research Institutes. Responses have come from the NZVCC and Science NZ. I was surprised to see the NZVCC so conciliatory, given that the report proposes higher core funding for CRIs, whereas universities have always called for openly competitive funding (except for their own core PBRF funding…). I’ll be doing more on this one.
2. Enrolments UCOL’s Wairarapa courses are full, with CEO Paul McElroy talking of replacing open entry with selected entry. Meanwhile, Career Services has been advising students to have a Plan B, and is offering help to develop one.
3. Students Student groups formally launched their Save our Services campaign yesterday. The campaign is supported by Rural Women New Zealand, University Sport New Zealand the Quality Public Education Coalition, the Tertiary Education Union, UniQ Victoria, the Council of Trade Unions, Te Mana Akonga and the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations. The Greens and Labour have come out in support.
4. Academic Rort? Well that title was a bit strong, but Stuff ran a story today about how some universities were decreasing the size of their 200 and 300 level papers and requiring students to do more higher level papers to finish their degree. I can see why consistency in paper size might be desired across all universities but the story includes no reassuranceto students’ concerns about possible fee and workload increases (ie will each paper decrease in work and price?). I’m sure it’s been covered in the background papers for academic approval but it really should have been put out there by the universities for this story.
5. ITOs Careerforce published a governance review earlier this week. I’m going to analyse it later but it stems from a long-standing industry dispute so should be interesting, as should the next steps.