Labour throws money away on failed tertiary reforms

Labour is throwing more money into failed tertiary reforms with its announcement today, says National Party Finance spokesman Bill English.

“The Government’s tertiary reforms, including the Tertiary Education Commission, are a good example of the kind of low-quality spending that’s achieving nothing and helping to force up interest rates.

“Labour has spent literally hundreds of millions thinking about how to run tertiary education, and constructing a complex bureaucracy.

“But universities ignore it, and polytechnics believe it doesn’t work but they go along with it in case they can get more money.

“This is a case where the Government could have pulled back its plans to spend more on TEC without affecting the cost of tertiary education to students. At the same time it would have helped reduce pressure on interest rates,” says Mr English.

“Money that could be spent on educating students will get lost in a bureaucratic swamp.”

National Party Tertiary Education spokesman Paul Hutchison says TEC chief executive Janice Shiner told the education & science select committee a few weeks ago that TEC was not ‘fit for purpose’ and revealed the TEC could not control every course.

“The Government’s expensive efforts to control each course have failed,” says Dr Hutchison.

“The Government is also pulling the wool over the eyes of everybody by claiming that the number of full time student equivalents (EFTS) is no longer the chief determinant of how much an institution gets in funding.

“But in fact, institutions I’ve talked to don’t think there will be much change at all, and EFTSs will remain the dominant form of funding.”

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