Disclosure: Male, Pale and Stale has a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA), concerning Supply and Demand Theory as applied to Education – it has never helped him to get a job, but he is aware of how the industry operates
On March 2nd 2022, in the NZ Herald, Chloe Swarbrick published an opinion piece, “Years in poverty the price of a Kiwi degree”. She cried crocodile tears to cover the first brick in a road to buying student votes; no doubt at the next election a raft of promises will be forthcoming.
Chloe stated that we are told that education is the “pathway out of poverty”. Au contraire, I come down on the side of Max Rashbrooke in his Stuff article of Feb 11th where he points out that trades, rather than degrees, have a lot going for them.
Chloe stated that “socio-economic status remains the sole determinant of educational success” in New Zealand. In fact, there is direct correlation and causation between IQ, conscientiousness, and culture, for educational success. Studies of thousands of twins raised under different circumstances (because they have been separated) widely support this claim.
However, all this palaver is just ideological cover for the primary influence on tertiary education access – the inflated cost of education. As an example, between 1993 and 2017 the average cost (fees) of attending NZ university tripled!
University fees rose well above the cost of inflation as university budgets bloated. Universities created more courses and, particularly, hired administrative staff, especially in the areas of ‘Health and Safety’, and increasingly, ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commissars’.
This should alarm us as New Zealand’s universities are large institutions, collectively employing approximately 21,500 full-time staff and turning over $4.15 billion annually. The universities teach about 178,000 students and produce about 44,000 graduates each year (88% at bachelor’s degree level or higher). Universities spend about $1.17 billion on research and are home to 70% of the country’s researchers. For the Left to have seized control of these institutions is great for them but should concern both Conservatives and Liberals.
The Labour Party recognises that the universities have usefully become dominated by Leftist principles. However, the cost of education being out of reach to local students was becoming an issue and is slowing down the ‘mass indoctrination process’. Their solution is to use government money to further finance the universities’ profligate spending.
Labour decided not to rein in university spending but rather to offer the first year’s tuition free of charge. Of course, Labour could not do this on their own at the 2017 election, as they were a minority government and only in power with the help of the “Greens”. The resolution was successful (2018) and subsequently future students (generally) would have their first year’s fees paid by the government. Chloe Swarbrick, as a list member of the Green Party, was party to that decision.
This created a very large incentive for universities to bring in as many first-year students as they could and to inflate budgets and grow their respective empires and departments, to introduce new unique and often quite valueless (to the student) courses and to establish new faculties and facilities. It’s all about the marketing.
Labour/Greens also promised that their “fees-free” program would cover two years of academic study in 2021 (last year) and three by 2024 (after the next election). Some people commented that this was “vote buying”. If it was then some people are now sorely disappointed, and well they should be. Labour/Greens reneged on this program in 2020 and Ms Swarbrick was party to that decision too.
But the damage was done. With the “socioeconomic barriers to education” apparently having been lowered by this fees subsidy, many universities increased budgets and some even ran at a deficit; e.g., UCOL planned a deficit of $1 million in 2019. (I am omitting 2020 onwards; because of Covid though, one can imagine the compounding deficit effects.) The upshot now is that New Zealand university fees are some of the highest in the world. An analysis of 50 nations with top-ranking universities ranked New Zealand the 14th most expensive, averaging $8595 per student per year. The median annual cost of university fees across all countries was $5240. Much of this burden is pushed onto foreign students attending NZ Universities.
Since Covid began two years ago NZ universities have received a “Covid Relief Grant”. In return they may well have been asked to manage-down some of their overheads and modernise the way they teach. However, Ms Swarbrick, as the Green Party spokesperson for education, while laudably speaking out against cost gouging by universities on student accommodation, does not address the cost gouging on fees, and the fundamental requirement for university reforms to reduce student fees.
Both Labour and the Greens are “all care and no responsibility” and “off target”.
Firstly, both Labour and Greens (particularly Ms Swarbrick as ‘education spokesperson’) are part and parcel to the decisions to deny the extension of the fees-free system – without which students come under financial pressure resulting in student poverty.
Secondly, today’s universities are run both ideologically and like a business. It suits both the Labour and Greens that these universities produce ‘ideological graduates’, which makes those tertiary education excesses, which they have supported, a target they are reluctant to attack. In fact, in matters like the new ‘school history curriculum’, it is very helpful to be able to call on “impartial” “authorities” from the “Education Department”.
Today’s universities are massive businesses with business objectives that include growth. They compete for the students for which they receive government support, to the extent that the expenditure of both is constantly growing. This needs to be reined in.
Due to Covid, there has been a massive change across all industries toward ‘home and away’ work and learning. If people can work from home, then they can study at home. I did my MBA while working full time and studying mostly online and that was in 1996!
Where is the evidence that the universities are flagships of modernity? Universities were never meant to be “profit centres” bleeding students and the government for self-aggrandisement. Their preferred focus seems to be on a “Green Restart”, mostly government-funded (of course). Rather than ideological utterances pontificating about students “victimised on a socioeconomic basis”, those universities charging the exorbitant fees and exploiting students should be the target of reform.
