The views expressed in the following articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Academic Score.NZ Skills Strategy Action Plan 2008. Released at the ITF Annual Conference in July.
"A stronger relationship between supply and demand is a key focus of the new tertiary education system...As stated in the Tertiary Education Strategy, students need to make informed decisions about what to study, tertiary education organisations must focus on providing excellent and relevant education, while stakeholders (industry, firms etc) need to provide good information about the skills and knowledge they need from the tertiary education system...The new system for tertiary education will promote a much stronger focus on quality and relevance of education. It will ensure that tertiary education organisations identify, plan for, and meet the needs of students, employers, employees, industry, Māori, community groups, and other stakeholders..."
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What is a student's place in the university? By Joel Cosgrove. Salient magazine. 12 May, 2008
“…Why do people get degrees overwhelmingly these days? To get a job. The question I get asked when I reveal that I'm planning on leaving Uni with a Gender and Women's Studies major is "What the fuck sort of job will that get you?", my answer is usually something like "Ministry of Women's Affairs". Because quite frankly this attitude against student involvement in University affairs is tied very closely with this attitude of University education as a short term practical qualification for personal gain…”
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University Vs. Polytechnic.By Jenna Powell. Salient magazine. 7 Apr, 2008.
"Should you be at university?
Out of Victoria's 21,000 students only a small percentage will graduate
and an even smaller number will move on to do postgraduate studies.
Only 15 per cent of students who enrol in a New Zealand university come
out with a qualification. It is a safe bet that most students do not
want to be professional academics...Any graduate can tell you that you
will not get the job of your dreams simply because you have a university
degree. Honey thinks "No degree is going to give you the motivation,
passion and ability to have clear goals." The real question is
whether university can engage in theory that supports practice..."
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Closer by degrees. By Ruth LePla. Bright Magazine. November/December 2007
"...if our educational institutions are packed with bright young minds, why aren't we seeing an improvement in the labour pool? No-one is pretending that closer links between academia and business are the sole solution to New Zealand's poor ranking on the OECD ladder. But most would agree that more common ground between tertiary education providers and business would help to foster growth. In an ideal world, academic institutions pour out well-rounded thinkers ready to explore and enhance the world of work. In reality, the disconnect can be significant. Businesses claim graduates are unrealistic and unprepared. Academics claim businesses don't give graduates a chance...
...Then there's the thorny issue of standards. "In New Zealand we have made a very strong push in the past 10 or 15 years to encourage tertiary education in general and university education in particular," notes Skilling. "So there are significantly more people graduating now. Not all of those people, I suspect, would have got into university in the past." Skilling believes that simply having a Bachelor of Business or a Bachelor of Commerce may no longer be enough for the competitive real world. "There are concerns that we may have diluted quality. Many (graduates) are very good but there are more people wandering around trying to get work with degrees than there used to be. Some of those people are at the lower end of the quality spectrum." Simply having a degree, it seems, is not a guarantee to gaining employment..."
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The uni split. By Brian Easton. The Listener. November 4-10 2006
"Letter to an expatriate: 2031...You can't have the job of a world-class Shakespeare scholar determined by students taking commerce instead of English"... ...Our universities were trying to do two quite different things: provide mass post-secondary education on the one hand and advanced education and research on the other..."
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Crisis of Identity? The Mission and Management of Universities in New Zealand. By Chris Barton. The New Zealand Herald. Friday October 12, 2007.
Book by Wilf Malcolm and Nicholas Tarling. Published by Dunmore Publishing.
"...The question mark in the title of Wilf Malcolm's and Nicholas Tarling's Crisis of Identity? The Mission and Management of Universities in New Zealand is irksome. Academics of their standing, having exhaustively researched their topic, should be able to make up their minds...
..."We are sure that we detect among staff, academic as well as general, a feeling of helplessness, of alienation, even at times of fear, that seems to us utterly alien to the proper spirit of a university, and utterly incompatible with its proper aspirations."
If that's not a crisis of identity, then what is?
Malcolm and Tarling highlight as the turning point the change in the role of the vice-chancellor to that of chief executive and the employer of university staff .
Previously the University Council was the employer and the vice-chancellor was one who epitomised and upheld university values - academic freedom, the pursuit of knowledge and above all, collegiality.
The change swept in with the tide of free-market reform where students became both products and consumers, and universities had to be responsible to the market and stakeholders. Vice-chancellors, now chief executives with the power to hire and fire, put in executive deans to run faculties who in turn put in executive heads of departments and schools - line managers accounting to central control and apparently guaranteeing quality.
What universities got was an enthusiastic embrace of managerialism - a package of management techniques including "an emphasis on productivity and output"..."
Click here to read the full article.
Site to Revolutionise University System
PRESS RELEASE: JULY 2008
A new website launched today aims to revolutionise the university qualification and employment process. AcademicScore.Com provides a free online tool enabling anyone who has attended a New Zealand university to calculate their Academic Score by simply entering their academic transcript results. more...
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