The governments zero budget approach has been applied to the tertiary sector – there will be no new funding overall in the coming year. However, there will be a significant amount of tinkering with the way funding is allocated within the sector.

As the media have pointed there are some increases within ‘Vote Tertiary Education’ (the part of the budget allocating money to universities, polytechnics, wananga, and other providers).

There is an extra $365 million for research over the next four years ($166 million of which goes to a new government agency called the Advanced Technical Institute, which is still under design). There is also an increase in funding to institutions providing engineering and science degrees. But, before we all get too excited about this ‘new money’, it has come at the cost of increasing the repayments for all of us who have student loans, and by capping student allowances to 200 weeks (if you study for more than 200 weeks you’ll have to pay your living costs through borrowing or savings).

What is more, the increase in funding for teaching in engineering and science doesn’t look so spectacular when set against inflationary pressuring in tertiary education and the fact that other areas of teaching have not been given any increase in funding. For each engineering student doing a degree institutions will get an 8.8 percent increase, and science funding will go up 2 percent. Tertiary education prices were up 3.6 percent on the March 2011 quarter, making a very small net gain for teaching engineering students but not in any other area of teaching and learning.

So perhaps our sector gains though the increase in PBRF funding. This competitive fund gets a boost of $100 million over the next four years. In the coming year, however, only an extra $6 million will be put into PBRF, a funding increase of 2.5% (and let’s just remind ourselves again the cost of running the sector has increased since last year by 3.6%).

The next gem is that 5,000 more students are expected to enter the tertiary education sector in the coming year. This is good news. We want more New Zealanders getting an opportunity to study. However, it would help if we had some new money to pay for their education rather than shaving money off the funding allocated for existing students.

Added to this, private training establishments (including companies making a profit out of education) will be able to compete with public institutions for level one and two funding; and, the government is giving them an extra $29.5 million over four years to close the funding gap that exists between them and our publicly-owned and governed polytechnics, wānanga, and universities.

By now you will be thinking the calculations overall look fairly grim. The big picture equation goes like this: no new money, inflation running at 3.6 percent in the sector, 5,000 additional students, and more competitive funding.

This means the sector must again do more with less, the formula that the National-led government has imposed upon tertiary education employees for the last four years.

So are there any ideas on how can we make up the shortfall in the cost of running the sector and what the government is prepared to invest?

Steven Joyce, Minister of Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, says that our institutions must do more to capitalise on the international student market. He wants us to move towards the Australian levels of international students (around 30 percent of all students in Australia are fee-paying international students compared with 10 percent in New Zealand) if we are to ensure the tertiary education sector flourishes.

So the equation for managing a zero budget in the tertiary education sector:

Stagnant government funding (despite rising costs) + increased competition + more fee paying international students = more well-trained and economically productive New Zealand citizens.

It seems a fairly ill-thought out equation to us. But what do you think of the Minister’s education investment equation?

Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson is proposing extensivechanges to employment law, which include allowing employers to walk away from collective agreement negotiations. Cabinet approved the changes this week and they will likely go before Parliament this year.

TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says the changes will have a huge impact upon people working in tertiary education.

“Removing the employer’s duty to conclude bargaining is among the worst of the changes – it would mean that we would probably not now have collective agreements in place at the ex ITP-MECA branches – Wintec, NorthTec, Unitec, Whitireia, and Bay of Plenty Polytechnic. It may also have prevented us resolving the long-running dispute at Auckland University last year. Under these changes the employers would have simply been able to say that they had tried their best but could not reach agreement. The effect of that would be that all our members would be sitting on individual agreements with no ability to collectively negotiate a pay increase or changes to their conditions.”

The government also intends to remove a provision that guarantees all new employees will be employed on the terms and conditions of the collective agreement for the first 30 days of their employment.

Ms Riggs says this will mean that new workers (who may not know or be told that there is a collective agreement in place at their institution) could be offered any employment conditions at all.

“We know now that employees usually stay on the conditions to which they are first appointed. If those are no longer the union negotiated conditions then new employees could be appointed on conditions that undermine the union conditions. This will enable the employer by default to introduce new conditions into the workplace – for example they could slowly erode timetabled teaching hours.”

The minister, Ms Wilkinson says that the changes are modest and pragmatic, and will increase productivity, and help create higher paying jobs.

However, the Council of Trade Unions says the changes being considered are the worst attack on workers’ rights since the 1990s and will give employees few options. The CTU says the changes would have enabled Ports of Auckland employer to walk away from collective agreement negotiations and proceed with redundancy plans.

Ms Riggs agrees.

“These law changes threaten to de-unionise tertiary education employees, and drive down pay and employment conditions. They are bad for productivity and worse for any vision New Zealand has of being a high-wage economy.”

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Petition to keep university councils democratic
2. MIT nixes fundraising BBQ
3. Budget 2012 preview
4. Commission agrees with TEU’s PBRF advice

Other news

Tomorrow is Pink Shirt Day, an international campaign aimed to raise awareness about the power to prevent bullying. Pink Shirt Day aims to reduce bullying by celebrating diversity and promoting the development of positive social relationships.

Canterbury University students are plan to hand a petition against the proposed closure of three arts courses to vice-chancellor Rod Carr tomorrow and say they will not leave his office until he receives the document. You Are UC student group spokesperson Morgan Hodgson said that on Friday the group would hold a “petition crawl” at the university, ending up at Carr’s office - The Press

Australian National University management has backed away from its plans to ”spill” the positions of 32 of its tenured and permanent academic and administrative staff at the School of Music, bowing to union pressure to use formal redundancy provisions instead. The decision came as 1000 music-lovers crowded into ANU’s Union Court yesterday to protest against the proposed cuts in one of the biggest and loudest rallies in the university’s history -Canberra Times

Contrary to the Heraldeditorial, the biggest factor in the University of Auckland’s slip in world rankings is not student numbers. From 2006 to 2012, Auckland’s THE ranking fell from 46th to 82nd, yet student numbers increased only nine percent. At the same time, Government funding slowed to below the rate of inflation. Without proper investment, New Zealand academics will continue to move overseas for higher wages, research cannot be adequately carried out and students cannot receive the best tuition - Arena Williams and Sam Bookman

The University of Canterbury’s school of music is in crisis and needs to rapidly reverse a student decline to survive, a new report says. To fund a wages’ bill of $1.4 million, the school needed more than 180 fulltime-equivalent students. It had 85 this year. The university said yesterday there was no possibility the music school would close. “This city lives and breathes music and we know the school of music is a critical part of the music community,” pro-vice-chancellor Ed Adelson said -The Press

The zero, budget (meaning there will be no overall increase in spending, even to account for inflation) is being preceded by several pre-budget announcements highlighting  some areas that will see increased spending as well as preparing voters for some of the less popular cuts.

Within tertiary education, Treasury forecasts from December indicated that tertiary education funding for 2013 will fall to be nearly $400 million below 2009 levels and will continue to fall until 2015. It also shows that numbers of funded full-time equivalent students will reach a record level this year (244,000) and will remain significantly above 2009 levels until at least 2016.

Within the confines of a ‘zero’ budget, the minister of tertiary education has already signalled that funding for degree-level science, maths, technology and engineering will be up but that funding for humanities and commerce may be down. Funding for PBRF research will be up, but funding for level and 1 and 2 courses may be down.

The budget’s big news story within tertiary education is likely to be restrictions on student allowances to four years of study, and the requirements to pay back loans more quickly. TEU views both these changes as an attack on equity and accessibility. There is no doubt that limiting people’s access to allowances, and increasing the financial burden that loans place on some people (especially low income earners, or those from low income families) will prevent some people from studying.

However, the other important equity issue is the gradual shift in funding from level 1 and 2 courses to degree and postgraduate study and research. All levels of study are important but the government is choosing to sacrifice the opportunities of first-time learners who are trying to get basic skills so that it can fund high-end research and study.

The other issue of note is that the Mr English appears only to be looking at the expenses side of the ledger in an attempt to balance future budgets (with the exception being he is not re-examining the 2009 tax cuts for New Zealand’s wealthiest earners, which took an estimated $2 billion out of our economy). He is not looking at investing in areas that can create more jobs, more skills and more opportunities – all of which would lead to more tax revenue and less expense for the government. Tertiary education has a critical role to play in solving New Zealand’s financial problems, but it needs support and resources to do it.

TEU’s written submission told the commission staff whose institutions had targeted them in this way suffered limited career progression opportunities and, in some instances, in redundancy.  It supported processes that offer the better protection against using PBRF performance as a rationale for making changes to employment conditions.

Meanwhile, Otago unviersity’s branch co-president Dr Brent Lovelock today told the Otago Daily Times people were losing their jobs because universities were “desperately trying to maintain or improve” their positions on PBRF tables.

“The PBRF process … has put alot of stress on staff and resulted inthe largest number of redundancies,in terms of academic staff, in my memory and I have been here for 12 years,” he said.

Associate editor of the New Zealand Journal of Psychology Associate Prof Neville Blampied told theOtago Daily Times PBRF was distorting research by discouraging some academics away from studying local issues.

“[Some may] have chosen to study something that is a hot topic internationally … and not to study stuff which is of very local interest but isn’t likely to sell internationally,” Prof Blampied told the paper.

The TEC consultation paper “Changes to the reporting framework for the PBRF 2012 Quality Evaluation” and the report prepared for the TEC by KPMG assessing the preparedness of TEOs for the 2012 Quality Evaluation highlight the extent of problems that have developed with the implementation of the PBRF model in our tertiary institutions.  The TEU therefore welcomes the efforts by the TEC to change reporting practices in order to remedy the effects of the inconsistencies in HR practices identified in the KPMG report.

The PBRF model was originally developed as a bulk funding mechanism to recognise and reward research excellence amongst tertiary institutions.  However during implementation many of its core principles and ideals have in our view been compromised, often with very negative consequences on achieving the original goals and on our members.  Therefore whilst any changes may have flow-on effects, we believe that the extent of discrepancies in preparing and reporting by TEIs make it imperative to implement new reporting modalities.  Otherwise, as the TEC notes in its paper, the results of this Quality Evaluation will lack credibility within the sector.

The two options

The TEU’s interest in assessing the options proposed by the TEC is first and foremost to consider the likely impact on our members and their employment.  TEU members have reported many practices by TEIs which are, in line with the TEC’s observations in paragraph 46 of the consultation document, inconsistent with the intent and principles of the PBRF.  These practices predominantly relate to staff appointments, career progression and performance management.  We therefore support a reporting framework that provides the best protection against using PBRF performance as a rationale for making changes to employment conditions.  Our members consistently report that it is staff whose TEIs have identified them as likely to occupy the “R” or “R(NE)” who become the target for changes to employment status, excessive management scrutiny, limiting of career progression opportunities and so forth.

For this reason we support Option 2: Excluding “R” and “R(NE)” from the calculation of the AQS.  As the TEC notes, this option “serves to remove one of the most significant incentives for TEOs to manage the employment relationships of staff for the purposes of maximising their ‘ranking’ through the Quality Evaluation measure.”

The two sub-options

The TEU supports variant B– not collecting a determination of eligibility in the PBRF census file.  While this option may limit the amount of information the Ministry of Education can collect in relation to the Quality Evaluation, that concern is overridden by the need to minimise the ability of TEIs to ‘game’ the system, by managing the eligibility of staff (through various dubious human resources practises).

Changing the reporting threshold

Finally, in regards to the proposal to change the reporting threshold (on the assumption that Option 2 is adopted), we would support such an approach, as it provides the best protection for members to ensure their Quality Categories cannot be inferred from this information.  The TEC paper notes that this may mean loss of some of the more detailed information currently available, which is likely to impact on smaller providers.  However, ensuring privacy of information for our members is a priority; we therefore support the TEC’s proposal to extend this threshold to the TEO level.  It is worth remembering in this instance that the information gathered during the PBRF Quality Evaluation process is a small part of the work that institutions undertake; equally there are many other ways that useful information can be obtained across the sector.

Conclusion

The information gathered from TEOs by KPMG, and the TEC’s subsequent efforts to address the issues identified in the report again highlight the importance of a broader debate on the effectiveness of the PBRF as a funding model, and more specifically its impact on staff and students and the work they are engaged in – teaching, learning and research.  The TEU looks forward to being part of this debate.

“Universities have tried to change their research rankings compared to other universities by ‘hiding’ staff they consider will compare poorly in terms of research output,” said TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey. “Universities have changed people’s employment agreements, restructured departments and people’s jobs and in some cases made academics redundant simply so that they can appear higher on a rankings ladder than other universities.”

The commission has released an initial audit of the performance based research fund exercise carried out by KPMG. The audit shows a range of problems with the way institutions are engaging the exercise, confirming that gaming has been occurring in the research funding exercise.

TEC general manager of strategy, planning and information David Nicholson told the Otago Daily Timesthe commission was taking the issues raised in the audit seriously and was concerned the way institutions managed their staff could affect their ranking on league tables. “We are now consulting with the sector to determine if there is a more meaningful way to report the [league tables],” he said.

Dr Grey said that competitive funding, by its nature can create perverse incentives. In this case, the perverse outcome has been job insecurity for many academics.

“TEU has consistently and publicly lobbied the commission about this issue for a long time and we are glad to see that our concerns have been recognised,” said Dr Grey. “I hope that this review and consultation on performance based research funding will mean that good teachers and emerging researchers at universities can have more job security.”

“Universities have tried to change their research rankings compared to other universities by ‘hiding’ staff they consider will compare poorly in terms of research output,” said TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey. “Universities have changed people’s employment agreements, restructured departments and people’s jobs and in some cases made academics redundant simply so that they can appear higher on a rankings ladder than other universities.”

Today the commission released the initial audit of the performance based research fund exercise carried out by KPMG. The audit shows a range of issues with the way institutions are engaging the exercise, confirming that gaming has been occurring in the research funding exercise.

“The Commission is now consulting on ways to end the gaming of the system, though this attention to the process has come too late for staff that have lost their jobs in institutions wanting to manipulate their quality ranking.”

“TEU has consistently and publicly lobbied the commission about this issue for a long time and we are glad to see that our concerns have been recognised,” said Dr Grey. “I hope that this review and consultation on performance based research funding will mean that good teachers and emerging researchers at universities can have more job security.”

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

Nine full time-equivalent staff will lose their jobs and more than 150 students will lose their majors and programmes at the University of Canterbury according to an announcement by the vice chancellor, Dr Rod Carr this week.

The vice-chancellor told staff at the university this week he intends to disestablish theatre and film studies, American studies and cultural studies programmes.

The university has said it will consult on the change proposal until 4 May this year.

TEU denounced the decision, and branch presidents from around the country have called upon the minister of tertiary education, Steven Joyce, to intervene.

An open letter from those branch presidents said Mr Joyce’s inaction in Christchurch threatens a broad and diverse education for local Cantabrians, but says he still has time to intercede.

“We believe it is not too late to act to save these programmes and the opportunities for students in these majors. Canterbury needs, now more than ever, a broad and diverse tertiary education that provides opportunities for all its potential students,” read the letter.

Theatre and film studies department co-ordinator Associate Professor Sharon Mazer told the Christchurch Press she was in shock about the proposal and would fight for the programme’s survival at every level.

The closure of the department would have a negative impact not only on the university’s academic integrity but also on the cultural life of the city, especially post-earthquake, Mazer said.

“At no time in our city’s history has it been more in need of ways of telling our stories and coming together to make a vibrant community,” Dr Mazer told the Press.

Some staff have alleged that the programmes under threat now are same ones that university management was targeting before the earthquake, and that management is simply reintroducing a radical change agenda that the university community previously rejected.

Also in Tertiary Update this week:

1. Will it be ‘Hello AHELO’?
2. VUW accused of rorting PBRF rankings
3. TEU members will not accept job casualisation in bargaining
4. Manukau negotiations conclude in one day

Other news

Christchurch’s earthquakes have had a big impact on the number of international students studying in the city with a 37 percent  drop in 2011, latest figures from the Education Ministry show. Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Steven Joyce says the results were expected. “The earthquakes in Canterbury have severely impacted the number of people from overseas wishing to study in Christchurch, “ Mr Joyce says.

Senior Consultant to Education International, the global federation of teachers’ unions, David Robinson tells National Radio’s Chris Laidlaw why he is unhappy at the way universities are being refocused for the purposes of commercial enterprise rather than academia and scholarship - Radio New Zealand

Reports indicate that, in recent months, the University of Bahrain has dismissed at least 117 of its academic staff and expelled more than 400 students for participating in demonstrations against the government or posting related links on social media sites - EducationInternational

The Tertiary Education Union is just one of many unions that has backed the Ports’ workers from the beginning, and national president Sandra Grey says the latest decision from the Ports is a step in the right direction - Te Waha Nui

When some University of Michigan graduate student research assistants started a drive to unionise about two years ago, they never imagined that their campaign would result in the governor signing a bill to prevent them and other graduate research assistants from organising at public universities in the state - Inside Higher Ed

Canada’s largest university, York, accepted a $30 million gift last year from a non-partisan think tank. Despite assurances by the think tank, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, that academic freedom at the public university will not be affected, the national professors’ union and more than 200 York faculty members fear otherwise. The key complaint about the gift has little to do with the money, but instead with the fact York agreed to give the think tank a formal role in selecting faculty – a break from the tradition in Canada and the United States of not letting donors decide who is hired - Inside Higher Ed

Popular Kiwiblog blogger, David Farrar, published earlier this week allegations that the university was changing the term of some of its fixed term agreements, encouraging academics to retire early and return on fixed term agreements,  and deliberately not employing staff who during the period that will negatively influence the June 2012 census.

TEU national president Dr Sandra Grey says the allegations fit with similar stories TEU organisers have heard from staff working at other universities.

“We know of staff being persuaded to resign on the understanding they will be rehired after the PBRF round is completed, staff put on fixed term agreements to avoid them counting for PBRF measurements, staff being offered shorter fixed term agreements to avoid counting in PBRF measurements, and potential staff not being employed to avoid them counting towards PBRF scores.”

“These cases represent an outrageous breach of people’s employment rights, and also make a farce of the PBRF as a funding mechanism,” said Dr Grey.

TEU is calling for the Tertiary Education Commission to launch a nationwide investigation into universities altering people’s terms of employment so as to rort their PBRF ranking.

Tertiary Education Commission spokeswoman Kate Richards told the Dominion Post the commission’s board is reviewing findings from a statutory audit into the PRBF with a summary expected to be publicly released shortly.

She said this year’s PBRF quality evaluation was expected to proceed as planned this year with the Education Ministry leading a policy review of the PBRF from mid-2012, which will include engagement with business, researchers and tertiary providers on options for the model’s future.

Victoria University’s Dr Martin Lally has claimed that the university has varied or sought to vary the employment agreements of a number of staff who are not active researchers, to ensure their temporary absence from the university at the June 2012 PBRF census date, thereby improving the university’s PBRF result.

These allegations fit with similar stories TEU has heard from staff working at universities in New Zealand, according to Dr Sandra Grey. We have raised these concerns with the commission over the past few years:

“We know of:

• staff being persuaded to resign on the understanding they will be rehired after the PBRF round is completed;
• staff put on fixed term agreements to avoid them counting for PBRF measurements;
• staff being offered shorter fixed term agreements to avoid counting in PBRF measurements; and
• potential staff not being employed to avoid them counting towards PBRF scores.”

“These cases represent an outrageous breach of people’s employment rights, but also make a farce of the PBRF as a funding mechanism,” said Dr Grey.

“We believe that the Tertiary Education Commission should establish a wider independent investigation to ensure no universities are rorting public funding in this way.”

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