‘Reducing student places a step back’
Auckland University of Technology Vice-chancellor Derek Mccormack has waded into the debate on university rankings and open access education.
In the past week, students protests in Auckland, a ‘‘zero Budget’’ and moves to tighten access to student allowances have all hit the headlines. And adding to the furore is the fact New Zealand’s universities have slipped in the world rankings.
Mr Mccormack says New Zealand’s education system is world-class, ‘‘so why are we trying to fix it by restricting access?’’
He also said he was familiar with the ‘‘back in my day’’ critic, who often argued that university qualifications were valued more when they were in short supply.
‘‘But we’re not ‘back in their day’,’’ Mccormack said. ‘‘The world is changing and there is nothing the same as ‘my day’. Most people who are concerned about this have grey hair. They have an argument but I don’t think it’s going to be the winning argument of the future world.’’
Not all university heads agree with Mr Mccormack, though.
Since 2006, University of Auckland’s world ranking has fallen from 46 to 82, leading some to ask if ‘‘open access’’ means a drop in quality.
University of Auckland ViceChancellor Stuart Mccutcheon suggested that to address the decline, student numbers be reduced and tuition fees – as well as investment in our top universities – be increased.
Mr Mccutcheon pointed out that international students relied heavily on rankings to determine the quality of a country’s university system, but Mr Mccormack said that rather than rankings, our focus should be whether we were falling behind other countries in terms of the number of qualified workers produced.
‘‘Looking at the big picture, a higher proportion of New Zealand universities are in the top 200 [world rankings] than Australian universities,’’ he said.
He also rejected the idea that we should push more funding into Auckland University to raise the ranking of one institute. ‘‘Rankings don’t mean much, but if they do, we’re doing pretty well. Now, would you like to under-fund a whole lot of universities in New Zealand to make one even better?’’
The country should be more concerned that our university system was running on such a tight budget, he said.
‘‘It’s probably so cheap we should be worried if we can keep up. It’s in a precariously cheap position. That’s where the University of Auckland’s concerns are right. We cannot expect the universities to run on making more and more efficiencies.’’
Mr Mccormack said New Zealand must invest in the future, because statistics showed that if you entered the workforce without qualifications, your future would be bleak. It was not difficult to fill unskilled roles, but employers were crying out for engineers, accountants and computer technicians, he said.
‘‘Letting as many people who have the aspiration and capability as we can go to university would seem a good move. Other countries around the world are doing that. We can’t continue to fall behind and we certainly shouldn’t take a step backwards by reducing the number of places we’ve got.’’