Public tertiary funding to go to private institutions without a quality guarantee

Liz Gordon MP Fri Aug 27 1999

The Alliance said today's announcement that private tertiary institutions are going to get access to public money without the promised quality assurance authority being set up amounts to the privatisation of tertiary education without any quality control.

'The tertiary white paper said private tertiary institutions would get more public money but only after a quality assurance body called the Quality Assurance Authority of New Zealand (QAANZ) was set up. QAANZ was to take on much of the role of checking the quality of education as the NZ Qualifications Authority had failed in that role,' Alliance Education Spokesperson Dr. Liz Gordon said.

'But QAANZ has not been set up and with the announcement in the Bright Future package of yet another tertiary review it doesn't look like it will happen before private institutions get their hands on millions of dollars of public money.

'We have already seen the collapse of one private tertiary institution costing students and the government thousand of dollars. Why is the government continuing to fund the private sector when they have no way of guaranteeing the quality of the courses?

'To give public tuition subsidies directly to private training institutions is the outright privatisation of tertiary education. Max Bradford is not only content with axing four of our universities but now he wants dodgy private ones as well,'

'What is worse is that this government does not divulge the level of funding to individual private tertiary institutions.

'This money used to go to our Universities and Polytechnics and was accounted for publicly. It is now being syphoned off to these unaccountable and sometimes dodgy private businesses,' Liz Gordon said.

ENDS

© Scoop Media