Our Views - The Role of Private Tertiary Education

Private tertiary education makes a contribution in almost every sector of New Zealand's economy and community and has done so for over 150 years. Their role is simply to serve the needs of students, employers, community groups and the wider public.

PTEs developed rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, shifting from 1-2% of enrolments to 10-15% of enrolments. Many PTEs developed into large, multi-site organisations meeting mainstream education. ITI's members were at the front of that charge, matching high growth with excellent student outcomes.

Many ITI members operate on a similar or larger scale than the public sector in their specialist area, so while they do not have the corporate overheads of a polytechnic, they have more focus on their specialist area.

The government's Statement of Tertiary Education Priorities states that the role of PTEs is to offer niche education and training that augments or complements the provision of the public providers'. The government has limited the PTE sector, first implementing a moratorium on new courses or sites, and then replacing it with caps on enrolments. The government has also set tougher standards for the private sector than for the public sector. PTEs have to justify the quality and relevance of every qualification over 2005-07 if they wish to retain their funding, while public providers only face the same rigour for a few courses.

ITI wants to ensure that when our members demonstrate their quality and relevance, they have a chance to grow on the same basis as any other organisation. With every PTE qualification being checked for quality and relevance over 2005-07, the successful providers expect a fair hearing from the government.

By supporting the role of the private sector, New Zealand will benefit from the innovation that diverse providers can produce. While economies of scale are important in some subjects (such as medicine), the value delivered by diversity more than offsets the smaller size of some ITI members. They will continue to focus on innovation and excellence in tertiary education well into the future.

ITI Launches Campaign with Like-Minded PTEs
February 2007

ITI is launching a campaign with like-minded PTEs this week to effectively represent the interests of quality PTEs in the implementation of the tertiary education reforms; and

- promote an enhanced role for quality PTEs in the tertiary education system.

ITI members have recognised the need for more work in those areas since the middle of last year and have committed extra funds. We realised, however, that the goals applied to most PTEs, not just our members, so we are inviting like-minded PTEs to work with us to achieve them. We put a similar proposal to NZAPEP last year, but they did not wish to take it up, so we are seeking support from individual PTEs. We expect that the Campaign will be largely complementary to the activities of other PTE groups.

The Campaign will focus on ITI's long-term goals, but will allow us to do more to achieve them. The tertiary education reforms present a big challenge to PTEs and we need to engage with them on a serious basis, just as other sector groups and government agencies are doing. The Campaign will be operated in a constructive manner and we look forward to having the resources to work in more depth with colleagues across the tertiary education sector, government, business and the community.

PTEs with Student Component funding will receive further information in the next couple of days, and we will be sending information to other stakeholders at the same time. Work on Campaign activities started this week, as ITI members have already committed funds to it.