NEW ZEALAND: Polytechnic universities opposed

New Zealand's universities are fighting the creation of a new category of tertiary institution that could provide an easy road for the nation's polytechnics to the title 'university'. But a repeat of Britain's wholesale transformation of polytechnics into universities is unlikely.
Not only does the proposed legislation lack political support but New Zealand's polytechnics oppose it as well. Like their peers in Ireland, they favour the establishment of an overarching degree-granting organisation with university status.

Parliament is currently considering a minor party's bill that proposes 'universities of technology' as a half-way house between universities and polytechnics. The new institution would focus on applied research and have a 50-50 mix of sub-degree programmes and those at degree or postgraduate level.

The bill's supporters argue that universities of technology would provide seamless pathways from vocational education and training to higher qualifications and would help meet skill gaps. They also say that the title is in line with overseas dual-sector institutions. But its critics say there is no need for the new category: New Zealand's 20 polytechnics already provide degrees and some also offer postgraduate qualifications and participate in New Zealand's research assessment system, the Performance Based Research Fund.

In addition, New Zealand's eight universities worry that the 'university of technology' title would confuse students and damage their international reputation.

'University' is a protected term in New Zealand and only one polytechnic has attained it – Auckland Institute of Technology, which became Auckland University of Technology in 2000. Another Auckland institution, Unitec, had its application delayed repeatedly and then, in 2005, was turned down for having too few staff with PhDs and fewer than 60% of its students studying at diploma level or higher.

Unitec is now the strongest supporter of the new bill but the institution faces a difficult task convincing parliament to approve, it as the MP who created and sponsored it has retired and the legislation does not have cross-party support. The bill also has little backing in the polytechnic sector and the sector body, Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics New Zealand, argued in its submission to the parliament's Education and Science Select Committee that the bill should not be passed.

With the tertiary sector, and polytechnics in particular, caught up in government reforms, the timing would be wrong for the creation of a new category of institution, the submission said. Instead, the institutes called for an investigation of the idea of a national body with university status that could award the degrees and postgraduate qualifications provided by non-universities such as polytechnics. Such an organisation could ensure parity of esteem between polytechnics' vocational degrees and those offered by universities, and prevent the polytechnic sector splintering into polytechnics and universities of technology, it argued.

* John Gerritsen is editor of NZ Education Review.