Spending billions, learning nothing in tertiary study

University education is one of the great follies of modern life. Central government spends over $3 billion on the tertiary sector, which contributes surprisingly little to our economic well-being. Free education is, regardless, very popular, even if it is useless, and this government is committed to expanding the number of students enrolled. Marvellous.

Academics and universities are assessed on the calibre of their research, not their teaching competence, and because they get paid regardless there is no incentive to be relevant. And they aren’t. When did you last use anything you learnt at varsity that you wouldn’t have picked up on the job or from Wikipedia?

Students spend years incurring debt and learning the precise parameters of their alcohol tolerance before emerging into the workforce ignorant, entitled and indebted.

I had a coffee with the head of a large IT company this week who despaired at the calibre of computer science graduates – and if you have taken an Uber you’ll appreciate just how useful a degree in communications really is.

In a country of 4.7 million people an absurd 415,000 of us are in tertiary education. Central government has become like Oprah: ‘‘You get a degree, everyone gets a degree!’’

In 2016 the government asked the Productivity Commission to have a look at this sector.

It wrote: ‘‘Despite the theoretical links, researchers have generally struggled to find strong empirical links between [tertiary] education and economic development. In New Zealand, comparatively high levels of tertiary attainment in the working-age population have not translated into high levels of productivity.’’

If students had to pay the real cost of their education they’d stop enrolling in psychology, and dental students might well ask why it takes five years to learn how to drill teeth. The war in the Pacific was over in less time.

There is a diminishing value to education. The first thing we learn is language, which is incredibly useful. After two decades we are studying the Gini co-efficient of Ghana and protesting the wage gap. These kids would be better served by earning money and experience in the workforce rather than incurring debt and protesting inequality.

Tertiary education has been reduced to a signalling mechanism. The assumption is bright kids do law while dullards plod along at international marketing or skip university altogether. This isn’t the case. There are some real fools who become lawyers, but it’s the system we’re stuck with.

A courageous government would confront this issue rather than accelerating the inflation of qualifications.

But we don’t have one of those.

In a country of 4.7 million people an absurd 415,000 of us are in tertiary education.