30 Mar 2016

Earnings from Tertiary Education

The Minister of Tertiary Education does a great disservice to the country by pushing income figures for a "prosperous" tertiary education.

Steven Joyce defends release of income data from health-related fields, engineering, finance and IT on the grounds that it will help students and families to make "smart decisions" for the future.

In this thinly disguised move to promote STEM – science, technology, engineering and maths –Joyce insults the whole tertiary sector.

He totally ignores the breadth of tertiary education and its benefit to the

He recasts tertiary education as an income equation.

He reduces tertiary education to individual interest.

He evades any discussion of alternative careers such as the public service, teaching, media and the arts.

He sidesteps the notion of fulfillment from careers built on other areas of tertiary education.

There are clear dangers from this kind of lop-sided public statement. The Minister is consciously setting the scene for rewriting the tertiary education sector, orienting it to employability, tampering with tertiary programmes, and paving the way for income league tables to label tertiary institutions.

The public tertiary education sector in New Zealand creates and challenges knowledge, educates students to become knowledgeable and critical thinkers, and contributes to the strength of the country.

In his totally unstatesmanlike media release, the Minister distorts the nature of tertiary education and undermines tertiary institutions. In so doing, he completely fails to address the idea of the common good.

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