Tertiary Provision Relevant To Manukau Needs

13 December 2005

Manukau Tertiary Provision Relevant To Manukau Needs

The announcement of a new tertiary facility in Manukau City holds all the promise of being able to meet the needs of Manukau people, according to Bernardine Vester, Chief Executive of the City of Manukau Education Trust (COMET).

“To recruit and ensure the economic growth of Manukau, residents need to have access to innovative and flexible programmes at both the foundation level and at degree level,” says Ms Vester. “What the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and the Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) have done is develop a collaboration which meets the broad sweep of needs, without the destructive and unhelpful competition which undermines community aspirations.”

A quarter of Manukau’s population has no qualifications, over a third has no post-school qualifications, and only 7% have degrees. 40,000 new jobs will be created over the next eight years, and it is projected that nearly 60% of those will require post-school qualifications. Bernardine Vester notes that there has been a lot of work completed to identify Manukau’s future skills needs.

“Adult literacy and foundation skills are a key requirement for any tertiary provision in this city; trades training is also significant. But there is no doubt that locally-available degree-level training to meet the needs of high-technology manufacturing and the service industries will be equally important. The costs and time for travel into the centre of Auckland City or to other campuses in the Auckland area is a disincentive to engage in education or training.”

”Both the AUT and the MIT have identified how their strengths can best be utilised to meet the diversity of Manukau’s needs. The economic benefits to the city of having a tertiary institution located in the town centre will be significant. The AUT and MIT ought to be congratulated for constructively working together to reach this agreement for the benefit of the Manukau community.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media