Media Release- Bailing Polytechnics won’t stop the sector sinking

National's Education spokesman Bill English, yesterday criticised Labour's $3 million suspensory loan deal to bail out Whanganui UCOL. Bill English claims that these types of rescue packages will do nothing to solve the financial problems that are becoming increasingly endemic in the polytechnic sector.

Such bail-outs are a consequence of tertiary sector under-funding. Otago Polytechnic student leaders condemned the last twenty years of sustained under-funding of the tertiary sector, at the hands of both Labour and National.

“Continued under-funding is the cause of the financial difficulties faced by many of the countries polytechnics and not bad management as Mr English suggests” says Natalie Absalom, Co-President of the Otago Polytechnic Students’ Association.

“The ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach to the funding of our polytechnics is a poorly thought out policy, surely funding a fence at the top of the cliff would be far more cost effective and would go someway in ensuring quality education is delivered” Otago Polytechnic Students’ Association Co-President, Richard Mitchell states.

"The polytechnic sector is sick, perhaps the medicine Dr Cullen should be prescribing is an ounce of prevention rather a pound of cure" says Ms Absalom.

Comment raises doubt over polytech degrees

Polytechnics' degree programmes could yet come under threat from new
Tertiary Education Minister Dr Michael Cullen, Otago Polytechnic student
co-president Richard Mitchell said yesterday.
At a recent student conference in Wellington, Dr Cullen said, in an
unscripted moment, he wanted to see polytechnics stick to their core role
within the tertiary education sector, Mr Mitchell told yesterday's meeting
of the Otago Polytechnic council.
Polytechnics' traditional business was sub-degree and trade courses, not
degrees, Mr Mitchell said.
That was previously the preserve of universities but polytechnics had
moved into the area.
Polytechnic chief executive Phil Ker said he had explicitly quizzed
high-ranking education bureaucrats at a meeting last month on that issue and
was told categorically there was no agenda to remove degrees from
polytechnics.
That left open the possibility in the future of looking at the delivery
of post-graduate courses at polytechnics, Mr Ker said.
Otago Polytechnic offers one of the largest range of degree courses in
the sector and is about to add a further course, a bachelor of environmental
studies.
Members of the council want to see results from the $770,000 their sector
association, the Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand
(ITPNZ), receives from the country's polytechnics.
A new funding model for the sector body went before councillors at their
meeting yesterday, and several said they would be calling for Otago
Polytechnic to pull out if the ITPNZ did not become more productive in the
coming year.
The new funding model is a result of a threat from the Manukau Institute
of Technology to pull its contribution.
Long-time ITPNZ chief executive Jim Doyle announced his resignation
earlier this week.
The polytechnic council's chairman Graham Crombie and deputy chairman
Mike Ferrari were re-elected unopposed for another year.

This article was taken from the Friday 3rd edition of the Otago Daily Times with the express permission of the writer, Tom McKinlay.