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Summarised by Centrist
The University of Auckland is poised to scrap its compulsory first-year courses on the Treaty of Waitangi and te ao Māori.
The academic senate recommended making them optional following negative staff and student feedback.
ACT leader David Seymour called the shift a “massive victory for people,” arguing students should be free to shape their own study.
Introduced this year as a core requirement for all first-year undergraduates, the Waipapa Taumata Rau papers were intended to give “foundational skills and knowledge,” including Treaty understanding. The reversal comes after just one semester. The university council is expected to consider the senate’s advice next month.
Seymour said compulsion backfired: “It’s important to a lot of people, but I oppose compulsion in all its forms. And when you say this is mandatory, it’s actually counterproductive.” He added the U-turn shows “a massive victory for people to be able to use reason and logic … and make up their own mind.”
ACT tertiary education spokesperson Dr Parmjeet Parmar said the university should “respect [students’] time and money, and put their interests ahead of Treaty ideology” if it wants to attract top students. She argued the paper was seen by many as “politically loaded and irrelevant, particularly for those in specialist programmes,” and raised concerns about academic freedom and student choice.
Seymour had earlier labelled the compulsory model “a perversion of academic freedom” and “a form of indoctrination”.
