Lincoln University had 802 domestic fulltime-equivalent students for semester one. It was the same number as last year and four more than in 2010.

CPIT chief executive Kay Giles told the Press the polytechnic had been able to restore its domestic numbers quickly because most of its students were from Canterbury, unlike other institutions, including universities, which relied more on students from outside the area.

“CPIT is about servicing this community, so we would expect for that reason to rebuild fairly quickly,” said Ms Giles.

There is still some way to go to get to 2010′s total of over 5000, but she believed the mid-year intake would ensure the target was met.

As of 20 March, 3,771 fulltime-equivalent students were enrolled at CPIT, compared with 3,401 at the same time last year and 4,066 in 2010.

However, international students at the two institutions remain significantly down on 2010 levels.

The polytechnic expects to face a $2.6 million drop in income from international-student fees this year, down from $9.9m in 2010 to $7.3m.

Despite this expected decline, the polytechnic was still budgeting for a surplus this year of $3.5m, Giles said.

Some CPIT courses had an increase in students, including quantity surveying, construction management, trades, civil services and architecture, reflecting the job market in Christchurch.

Mere days into its stewardship under a new vice-chancellor Lincoln University is proposing to restructure its Faculty of Commerce and make five senior tutors redundant.

The change proposal document states that the university wants to disestablish all existing senior tutor positions in the faculty. A new 0.5 FTE administrative assistant will help to undertake the administrative tasks of eight senior tutor positions (of which three are already vacant).

The university will also transfer the teaching-related tasks of senior tutors to teaching assistant positions (currently referred to in the Faculty as casual tutors) that work closely with, and report directly to course examiners.

Lincoln management says casual tutors would usually be suitably qualified graduate students or senior undergraduate students but non-students may also be appointed to the role.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs said she is concerned that this proposal may be the start of increased casualisation of the academic workforce at Lincoln.

“Not only is the university reducing the number of staff with no effort to also reduce workload, it is also replacing good, permanent jobs with casual, insecure ones.”

“I have concerns about the job security of academic staff who have invested time into developing teaching resources that may then be used by less qualified casual staff to cover their teaching requirements.”

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Govt signals another austerity budget
2. Joyce rejects call to prevent UC closures
3. TEC outlines its goals for 2013
4. Aussie uni comparison site ‘must be treated with caution’

Other news

University of Canterbury pro-vice-chancellor of the college of arts, Prof Ed Adelson, released his change proposal for the college of arts. The change proposal calls for the termination of American Studies, Cultural Studies and Theatre and Film Studies programmes. On Wednesday 28 March students were given their only public opportunity to have their voices heard. Here is a video of some of those voices.

People with student loans going on their big OE will have to start repaying their loans after just one year and provide Inland Revenue with a contact in New Zealand to help track them down - New Zealand Herald

At a time when society needs genuine regeneration, facilitated and encouraged through high quality public education, many of the so-called ‘reforms’ in education seek to portray teachers as simple transmitters of skills, and schools as institutions established to produce made-to-order students for the job market. In this context, families become education consumers, neatly fitting into market segments divided by their socio-economic level -Worlds of Education

Wisconsin’s controversial Republican Governor Scott Walker will face a recall election on 5 June over a new law he championed that strips public sector and tertiary education unions of most power, becoming the first U.S. governor to face a no-confidence vote in nearly a decade - Reuters

Photo of Eric J Stone (TEU) and Terry Mita (TIASA) at Moerewa with a ute full of food that union members at NorthTec collected together to support Affco workers locked out by Talleys. Laurie Nankivell the MWU Shed Secretary on the picket line was pleased at the solidarity shown by education unions. Some of these workers have not had work for five weeks.

Employment negotiations for thousands of university staff at seven of New Zealand’s eight universities will begin in three months’ time, and union members are already working out what the main issues they need to see addressed to improve their working life.

One of the biggest issues facing many staff is increasing workloads because of staff numbers not keeping pace with student numbers. TEU members across all seven universities will be claiming employment protection for staff whose workload increases because of redundancies or restructuring.

The nationwide claim says if within six months of a review, restructuring or management of change process concluding, employees believe that their workloads are excessive, or that staffing levels are not sufficient, they may request a review of their workload. If the review finds that workloads are not safe, equitable, or reasonable the university must take appropriate steps to remedy the situation.

TEU university academic vice-president John Prince says the short-term effect of reviews is stress and job losses, but the long-term effect, if reviews are poorly conceived, is increasing workloads.

“We want an assurance that the many reviews currently taking place are not just about cutting staff numbers and shifting all the existing work onto those staff who remain.”

Employment negotiations will begin at the end of June for staff at the universities of AUT, Canterbury, Lincoln, Otago, Massey, Victoria and Waikato.

If you have a workload story to support TEU’s negotiations, leave a comment below.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Restructuring affecting 500 workers
2. New super ministry to manage commission
3. Farewell Ray Fargher
4. Auckland ports back down on contracting out
5. Aussie tutors join the ‘Precariat’ workforce
6. International trade agreement akin to asset sales

Other news

There is a nasty narrative creeping into the national conversation New Zealand is having about education these days, that of the superhero teacher. If you’re unfamiliar with the plot line, it goes something like this. There is a massive achievement gap in academic achievement and this gap is because of bad schools. Since teachers are the most important things in schools, if the schools aren’t delivering then it must be because teachers aren’t delivering. Enter the superhero teacher - Teaching the Teacher

A Cambridge student was suspended from the university for two-and-a-half years today for his part in a protest during a speech by the Universities Minister David Willetts. The “unprecedented” sentence handed down to Owen Holland, a PhD student in the Faculty of English, came on the same day as students marched in London and walked out of institutions across the country to demand Mr Willetts’ resignation - The Independent

A private computer training institute with hundreds of students has gone bust owing more than $8.3 million in tax, penalties and interest. Computer Power (NZ) Ltd, which runs Computer Power Institute campuses in Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland, was put into liquidation in the High Court at Wellington this week. The institute has about 750 students including about 150 international students. The 47 staff have been paid until the end of the month - Dominion Post

An Indian immigration consultancy claiming to operate in NZ (and actually operating in India) has used a murdered US student’s image in their marketing (seemingly lifted from the Internet). It works with, among others, Canterbury, AUT, BOPP and Unitec - ED Blog

TAFE has hit the wall in Victoria’s open training market, with unprecedented private college growth relegating the public provider into minority status and throwing its financial viability into question. Details from an unpublished quarterly report from Skills Victoria, which shows that TAFEs now have less than half of the government-supported enrolments, emerged the day after Prime Minister Julia Gillard said states needed to protect their TAFEs -The Australian

The new universitech, which was the result of a ministerially-driven merger of Canterbury-based tertiary institutions, had until this week been provisionally trading under the name LinctaburyPIT. It has now completed its rebranding and market positioning exercise. The result is it will partner with, and adopt the branding of the United States’ largest education provider, Phoenix University. Phoenix University of Canterbury also announced this week that its streamlined post-merger flexible human resourcing structure would deliver significantly improved returns for bond investors.

“We believe that by removing duplication of library services, back office functions and administration we can save money. We will be able to offer our customers, students, a twenty-four hour a day service to complement their learning experience,” said newly appointed chiefancellor Sir Giles Carrfield.

“Looking forward, these savings have allowed us to invest in Phoenix University’s strategic direction, by appointing a new layer of management.”

“We congratulate Dr West and are looking forward to working well with him.”

“We also farewell Dr Roger Field, who is a well-respected and highly regarded leader, and lifelong academic.”

“Leaders do make a difference to universities, and we believe the best leaders are ones who are committed to, and currently engaged in academia, both teaching and research.”

“What the whole of Canterbury needs now is academic leaders committed to, and involved in education, rather than managers committed to ministerial diktats about economic budget cuts.”

“Lincoln also needs a local advocate to defend a unique university, and we trust that Dr West, with his close links to both the area and the university has the skills to fulfil that role,” said Dr Grey.

For more information:

Dr Sandra Grey, TEU national president, 021 844 176 or 04 801 5098
Stephen Day, TEU communications officer, 021 2900 734 or 04 801 4792
http://www.teu.ac.nz

Last week the three major Canterbury tertiary institutions appeared surprised at the minister’s merger musings, with Lincoln University’s vice-chancellor Prof. Roger Field telling the Christchurch Press no work had been done on a possible merger between Canterbury and Lincoln.  The University of Canterbury’s vice-chancellor, Dr Rod Carr told the Press “we note the minister’s statement that he is not looking for mergers for mergers’ sake and we support that approach.”

However TEU’s national president Dr Sandra Grey now says it is likely the minister or his officials have told the three institutions to consider whether they can combine many of their non-academic functions into one region-wide office.

“We believe it is most likely that the minister is not focused on full mergers but on Canterbury’s three major tertiary institutions merging many of their administrative functions into a single entity while retaining separate educational academic faculties, education missions and ‘branding’.”

Dr Grey says administrative staff at the University of Canterbury, in particular, have already been through several rounds of destructive reviews and job losses.

“Further job ‘consolidation’ is unlikely to be good for Christchurch, either in terms of efficiency and quality for students, or in terms of employment morale at three of the city’s biggest employers.”

“The adrenaline and determination to overcome the odds that helped people get through the ongoing earthquakes will eventually recede and be replaced with the day-to-day stresses of rebuilding normal lives in difficult circumstances.”

People who are already under stress will be particularly vulnerable to workplace stress as well.

Workplace stress is a recognised health and safety risk and employers have a legal duty to identify, eliminate, contain or minimise causes of workplace stress.

“The important thing for employers to recognise is that workplace stress is not necessarily caused by the amount of work someone is responsible for, but how much control people have over their work and working conditions. All too often workplace stress is caused by “excessive managerialism, and lack of trust in employees to act professionally.”

Another major cause of workplace stress is restructuring and reviews where the goal is to cut jobs in response to government funding cuts.

“Thanks to the minister of tertiary education staff at Christchurch’s tertiary institutions are already surrounded by uncertain rumors about the long-term futures of their institutions and their jobs. We expect local employers to do everything they can to meet their legal duty to eliminate any remaining causes of workplace stress,” said Ms Riggs.

Mr Joyce told RNZ the earthquakes mean Canterbury University, Lincoln University and the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology have to take a close look at their strategic planning.

Mr Joyce says all options are on the table, including possible mergers.

He says the polytechnic will be vital in providing trade skills needed for rebuilding the city, but there could be room for the two universities to work more closely together.

“I would stress that we’re not looking at mergers for mergers’ sake,” said Mr Joyce.

In its publicly released, but highly censored, briefing to the incoming minister TEC notes that overseas jurisdictions such as Australia and some US states have successfully used ‘Compacts’ – long term strategic agreements between large education providers and central government. These compacts use performance as the basis for funding high-level strategic initiatives, in tandem with more mechanistic funding of “throughput” at an individual student level.

“Such mission based compacts can tie an institution’s strategy and activity with national objectives by defining in advance reward payments for specified achievement rather than micro-managing inputs.”

Towards the end of its briefing TEC suggests the minister may want to develop a new tertiary education strategy (TES) in the next few months, setting out the government’s tertiary education goals, even though the current TES does not expire until 2015. Quickly following that recommendation are three and half pages of briefing that TEC has withheld from the public under the Official Information Act.

Education Directions’ CEO Dave Guerin noted earlier this week that the chance of a new TES seems low.

“We may be reading far too much into the first bullet on p.38 (stating that a new TES would be needed by the end of Feb 2012 to fit the next investment cycle) and some withheld text on p.30 (just after a statement about the current TES). The TEC also wrote that the next few months is ‘an important, time limited opportunity’ for the Minister, so it’s always possible he might use it.”

TEU general staff vice-president Helen Kissell is concerned that information about a series of major decisions to be made about tertiary education by March this year has been withheld.

“Is one of those recommendations the business case for the Canterbury region or wider TES following the Christchurch earthquakes? Who would know? I am concerned about the increasing tendency to use the Official Information Action to suppress what we could reasonably expect to be public information. “

At least nine New Zealanders have joined a global boycott of Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific journal publisher. The protest has rapidly gained momentum since it began as an irate blog post at the end of January. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education by Tuesday evening, about 2,400 scholars had put their names to an online pledge not to publish or do any editorial work for the company’s journals, including refereeing papers. Protesters accuse Elsevier of charging too much and supporting laws that will keep research findings bottled up behind a company pay-wall.

Employees of the universities of Auckland, Lincoln and Otago have signed the pledge as well as one staff member at NIWA.

Brett S. Abrahams, an assistant professor of genetics at the USA’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told the Chronicle, “The government pays me and other scientists to produce work, and we give it away to private entities. Then they charge us to read it.” Mr Abrahams signed the pledge on Tuesday after reading about it on Facebook.

According to the boycotters, Elsevier, which publishes over 2,000 journals including the prestigious Cell and The Lancet, is abusing academic researchers in three areas. First there are the prices. Then the company bundles subscriptions to lesser journals together with valuable ones, forcing libraries to spend money buying things they do not want in order to get a few things they do want. And, most recently, Elsevier has supported a proposed US law that could prevent agencies like the US National Institutes of Health from making all articles written by grant recipients freely available.

However Elsevier rejects the complaints saying, globally, the amount of research that is published is going up every year but library budgets are not keeping pace.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. WITT gains from PTE closure
2. TEU negotiates improved Canterbury timetable
3. University of Auckland pushes Teach First
4. Student loan debtors escape on OE

Other news

Wintec settled a collective agreement with its academic staff late last year. NorthTec is now the only one of the old ITP MECA polytechnics not to settle a collective agreement with its staff. NorthTec wants an employment agreement which allows it to direct staff to work any days, evenings and weekends. Tutors have not had a pay increase since November 2008.

“The government should be focusing on creating jobs and getting money into the pockets of low and middle income people by stimulating the economy rather than an inflexible deficit target,” says CTU Economist Bill Rosenberg. “We have had over 150,000 unemployed and 250,000 jobless almost constantly now since mid 2009. The unemployment rate at 6.6 percent is barely below its financial crisis peak in December 2009.” – CTU

Lower Hutt is in danger of losing its last provider of adult community night classes. Hutt City Workers’ Education Association (WEA) president Maurice Payes confirms a funding squeeze has forced the group to lay off its two part-time workers, who are owed wages. Four Lower Hutt colleges abandoned running adult community courses in 2010 when the National Government cut $13 million out of the $16m annual Adult Community Education (ACE) budget. That left the WEA as the last provider – Hutt News

United States President Obama brought his campaign for college affordability to an audience of Michigan college students last week, pledging that his administration would be “putting colleges on notice” over rising costs and issuing a call for continued public support for higher education by states so that the USA does not become a nation where education is reserved for the well-to-do – Chronicle of Higher Education