ITI Articles

The problem with the current tertiary education reforms process is that as soon as some decisions are released, the next wave of work is well underway. In the latest case, the Minister of Tertiary Education made his announcement on July 27 and released the relevant Cabinet papers, which were from June 28. So decisions were made a month before being released and officials are due to report back on major items in early August and September, making the Minister's commitment to consultation a little suspect.

ITI's concern is that decisions have already been made on various issues that are canvassed in the June Cabinet papers. For instance, the June Cabinet papers differ little from the general ideas being canvassed in mid-May by officials. Assuming a 6-8 week lead time between officials' ideas and Cabinet decisions, is there much point in seeking input to the important September papers going up to Cabinet? Those September report-backs include major changes to profiles required because of the shift to plans, and pretty much the whole funding system, but it seems that there might only a week or so to influence the papers.

It is also worthwhile noting that the Minister's 27 July media release does not call for any specific consultation process or date, and nor does it highlight the myriad papers that Cabinet has asked for over the coming months. This compounds the problems with the consultation that kicked off in April, when stakeholder meetings were organised on 2-3 days notice, based on high-level and content-free papers.

Consultation now seems to have begun and ended in April, making this probably one of the worst tertiary education consultation processes in recent times. It reminds one of the reforms of the 1980s, when Roger Douglas encouraged Ministers to rush reforms through before anyone realised what was going on.