QPEC: Inteuri buys ITTI

QPEC: Inteuri buys ITTI

"Inteuri's purchase of ITTI (the Information Technology Training Institute) continues the process of undermining public tertiary education in New Zealand," says Dr David Cooke, spokesperson for QPEC, the Quality Public Education Coalition.

Inteuri already owns a large stable of private training establishments (PTEs). Significantly, three of them received an increase of $1.8m in public funding between 2012 and 2014 – more than the $1.2m that Inteuri paid for ITTI. Overall, Inteuri got at least $8.6m in public funds in 2014 and declared a profit of $1.6m last year.

Last year, ITTI received $900,000 in government funds, almost double the amount it got in 2013.

"There are two problems with this development," says Dr Cooke. "The first is that public funds – our tax dollars – are being used to subsidise private institutions."

"The second is that government is deliberately shifting support away from public tertiary institutes like polytechs and into PTEs. Between 2012 and 2014, the regional polytechs lost funding of $17m. This means that in the public sector, decades of careful upgrading, scholarship, research and teaching are being drained away and discarded."

The reason, Dr Cooke says, is that government is committed to an ideology of privatising public institutions. "The upshot is that Inteuri's white male Board of Directors is feeding money straight to shareholders in Australia and NZ as 'profits', rather than using funds to benefit the student population, disadvantaged learners, tertiary institutions and New Zealanders. Can this be right?"

ENDS

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