“The public is finally beginning to read the spin over tertiary funding with which Associate Minister of Education, Steve Maharey has beguiled it over the last eighteen months,” New Zealand First Education Spokesperson, Hon Brian Donnelly MP said today.

“Maharey has continued to talk in slogans but the Governments actions have not matched his rhetoric.

Real per capita funding of tertiary institutions has dropped dramatically since 1999. Last year’s fee stabilisation process dropped the percentage of course costs even further and, combined with unique inflationary costs, really squeezed our tertiary institutions.

A further cut will be disastrous. Tertiary institutions have no alternative but to make dramatic protest so the public knows what is really going on,” Mr Donnelly said.

Ends

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>