Stay out of judging courses, regulator tells politicians

Politicians should stay out of judgements deeming universities or courses to be substandard, while joining together higher and vocational education is key to sector regulation, according to the chief executive of New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission (TEC).

Tim Fowler was speaking on a visit to the UK, which included meetings with the Office for Students (OfS), the English higher education regulator – under fire from universities that see it as too influenced by government and as imposing huge data burdens on all institutions.

TEC, a crown agency, manages public investment with a role as “stewards of the tertiary education and careers system”, including New Zealand’s eight universities, funded through a combination of public funding and tuition fees.

Mr Fowler highlighted that several nations are rethinking tertiary regulation, with Ireland mounting major reforms, and Wales having introduced a new regulator overseeing the entire post-16 sector, including further education, higher education, apprenticeships, sixth forms and Welsh government-funded research.

There is “a relatively strong element of the New Zealand system in the way the Welsh have set their system up”, he said.

It may be difficult in a nation the size of England, but “pulling together higher ed and vocational and what we call foundation-level education, which is the remedial stuff out of high school – being able to get your arms around all of that and have a sensible policy conversation – is actually really bloody important”, Mr Fowler added.

In England, the Conservative government has put pressure on the OfS to act on “low-value” courses and investigate certain courses. Is the political pressure anything like that in New Zealand?

“No, it’s not,” said Mr Fowler. “My view is a government’s job is to provide the information and the platforms that allow people to make good decisions [about which course to study] and leave them to making their own individual calls,” he added. “I think it’s disappointing [to] hear governments or individual politicians making judgements around who’s ‘no good’, and ‘that course is hopeless’.”

Although the TEC has powers to fire university councils or install independent financial advisers at a university, “my sense is we trade very heavily upon our relationship with the sector and playing an even-handed, fair but really robust approach to supporting them to be financially sustainable and wildly successful”, said Mr Fowler.

In New Zealand, the government recently announced a 5 per cent increase in tuition subsidy for 2024 – the highest ever increase, but still below the rate of inflation. Victoria University of Wellington was reported to have told staff soon afterwards that one in 10 jobs were under threat.

Mr Fowler said: “We’re going through a really interesting time at the moment where three of our big universities are for the first time going through some really difficult financial restructures. That’s off the back of things that are going on globally: a very tight labour market, inflation, [and] demographics declining so there aren’t so many students coming out of high schools.”

Those universities were thinking about how they will look in the future and, said Mr Fowler, “our job in that is really to support [that process], to guide it – where they need help, we’re here for it”.

Does the TEC have a role where it can appeal to the government to increase funding? That is “absolutely our role”, but there is also a recognition that the government is operating “in a constrained environment”, said Mr Fowler.

He added: “I wouldn’t want to downplay the importance of appropriately funding the system…but we’re also equally cognisant it [setting a budget] is a prioritising and trading-off exercise every year for a government.”

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com