Our Views - Export Education

Most of our members have some international students, recognising the value that they have in increasing the scale of our operations and enriching the learning environment. Pacific International Hotel Management School enrols around half of its students from overseas, while most others have under a tenth of their students from offshore.

Besides enrolling students from offshore, members also have academic and student exchanges with overseas institutions. Pacific International Hotel Management School is part of an international network of hotel schools, Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design has regular academic exchanges with American institutions and Media Design School has started a student exchange with a German institute.

We work with government agencies directly and through Education New Zealand, an umbrella body for the export education sector. Our main aims are to ensure that New Zealand's immigration policy is internationally competitive and well implemented, and that the government-established export education levy is set and spent by the industry, not the Minister of Education. While there is some generic promotion of New Zealand education sponsored through the government and the levy, most of our members have specific markets and pursue their own initiatives.

Media Release - Good first step by govt on education levy
April 2004

“The Government has taken a good first step by removing the retrospective element from its export education levy Bill. The u-turn follows concerted efforts across the export education industry to get the whole Bill thrown out of Parliament. ITI also acknowledges the support of United Future, NZ First, National and ACT in this matter”, said Dave Guerin, ITI executive director.

The Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill will still give the Minister of Education the power to charge private training establishments (PTEs) for the cost of reimbursing their competitors’ students if their competitors closed. Today’s announcement means that the Government will not be charging PTE for closures that happened before the Bill is passed.

“The Government should now trash the rest of the Bill too, since it has received no support from the export education industry for its proposals. The PTE sector should not be treated as an open chequebook for other people’s mistakes. No other industry is expected to bear such costs.”

“ITI had a good hearing by the Education and Science Committee several weeks ago and we look forward to their report on the Bill, which should reflect the lack of support for the Bill in the industry.”

Contact Dave Guerin at 04 499 8159 or 021 404 334. Independent Tertiary Institutions (ITI) is a group of 15 high quality private tertiary education providers enrolling over 6,000 students pa.