ITI Articles

I have enormously enjoyed representing Independent Tertiary Institutions, and its predecessor organisations, since 2002. The members have diverse approaches, reflecting the wide range of stakeholders that they serve, but they have a common core of a commitment to educational integrity, good management skills and a healthy dose of common sense. Besides operating good education providers, they are good people, and we have made a good team together.

ITI's members are, of course, all privately operated, whether they be companies, trusts or incorporated societies. That adds an interesting spice to the organisation because they have a wider set of priorities than if they had the same owner. It doesn't lead to conflict, simply because they focus on areas of shared interest, but the different perspectives help keep members open to new ideas.

Education has been, and will always be, run by a mix of private and public organisations, for the very good reason that stakeholders value and support both public and private delivery. Public education providers tend to be in the ascendancy in New Zealand, in terms of taxpayer resources, but things will ebb and flow as governments and policy priorities change. Absolutist policies don't work, in my experience, and responses to demand driven funding in the early 2000s by public and private providers, especially the rapid growth of programmes that are commonly viewed as being low value for money, demonstrates pretty clearly that bad incentives can lead to bad behaviour regardless of your ownership structure. On a more positive note, both public and private providers routinely produce superb results. Overall, I hope that the public/private policy debate continues on a level keel at least (if not a level playing field...).

Looking back on my own involvement in the PTE sector for the last 13 years, my main contribution has been to move beyond slogans and to explore how the PTE sector actually works. I am proud of the research, advocacy and management consultancy work that I have done in the sector and I believe it has lifted the level of debate about PTEs. I am continuing some research into the history of PTEs, and hope to have something published in the next year.

From next week I am starting a new challenge as Executive Director of Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand. ITI's operation will be left in good hands with Neil Miller. Besides being a good friend of mine, he has the skills and experience to support ITI members on the national stage, and I look forward to seeing him develop ITI in new directions with the members.

Regards,

Dave Guerin