Disagreement with ‘ODT’ editorial on tertiary education ‘sweetener’
REGARDING your editorial ‘‘Labour’s unwise tertiary sweetener’’ (16.9.17): It really is past time to put the simplistic commodification of tertiary education behind us. Thus it behoves the ODT to do a little more for editorial comment than lift the trite musings of a fringe group like the Taxpayers’ Union as the basis for an argument on such a serious subject.
Firstly, it is not true ‘‘that paying even a proportion of course costs encourages higher standards both from students and institutions. Pay for something and it is much more likely to be valued.’’
The reality is quite the opposite. Many students regard themselves as ‘‘customers’’ and the pressure on institutions, which must watch their ‘‘production’’ levels, is to give them what they pay for rather than to focus on the integrity of the disciplines we all need to keep us going as a society.
I have no doubt an assignment marked today is a grade higher than one marked 20 or 30 years ago. Look at the proportion of first class honours degrees on graduation day. What was the exception is now the rule. And if the
ODT thinks having to pay encourages students to be more diligent in attending classes, etc, than they used to be, it should think again. The ‘‘rational man’’ (or woman) of classical economics is rather more theoretical than real.
Secondly, what sort of standards does the ODT think pertains in all those European universities — Scotland, France, Germany, Scandinavia, etc — which have no or minimal fees? And almost all of them rank more highly than any New Zealand university. Lastly, given we need graduates for all those activities, from plumbing to brain surgery, and that they are likely to earn more than nongraduates, perhaps they should pay when they earn it, rather than what amounts to a charge on potential earnings. Let us please move on from the silly notion that it’s only individuals who benefit from tertiary education.
Dr Harry Love
Honorary Fellow University of Otago
YOUR editorial suggests paying tuition fees ‘‘encourages higher standards from students’’. My own experience of nearly three decades’ teaching in universities across four countries suggests otherwise: the more students are encouraged to think of education as a commodity, the less likely they are to put in the hard work required of them. This is hardly surprising: after all, if you go into a shop to buy a product, you don’t have to carry out a long and demanding series of tasks before you take it home with you. Nor in general is it true that ‘‘pay for something and it is much more likely to be valued’’. Not everything in life is a commodity: do we value our children because we pay for their upkeep? A university degree is not a commodity, and universities are not shopping malls.
Alex Miller
Roslyn