Tertiary committee idea

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32861, 9 March 1972, Page 16

Tertiary committee idea

A tertiary grants committee to coordinate the planning and finance of the country’s technical institutes, universities and teachers’ colleges was suggested in Christchurch yesterday by the secretary of the Student Teachers’ Association of New Zealand (Mr L. R. Wright).

Mr Wright, who for the last three years has been the education research officer of the University Students’ Association, said that a tertiary grants committee would be a way of ensuring

that no one sector of tertiary education would be able to “cream off” most of the finance available.

Flexibility of planning, i now the prerogative of the universities, would be extended to the technical . institutes and teachers’ colleges if they were given . grants. “This point has been made pretty clear recently in Christchurch, where the Teachers’ College Council is in financial difficulties because it just does not know from the Department of Education what finance is available,” he said. TECHNOLOGY Technological education was no longer the preserve of the universities in New Zealand, and the time was fast approaching when technical institutes would provide sub-degree and degree-type courses, said Mr Wright. A tertiary grants committee would ensure that these moves would be carried out smoothly and not as in Australia, where the development of colleges of advanced education had led i to a great deal of bitterness | in the university system. “Universities here should ; not be something above and . beyond the rest. There is ho doubt in my mind that a , good many university people . will be clinging to the ivy as . hard as they can if it is sug- , gested that closer practical , relationships be established ; with other tertiary institutions,” said Mr Wright. A tertiary grants commitl tee would also solve some of . the problems associated with I the debate on the types of ' awards each institution was , entitled to grant, he said.

ENTRANCE STANDARD A central body would also make it easier to ensure standard entrance requirements and clear up some of the present confusion about student bursaries which differed widely from one type of tertiary institution to another. Concurrent with the abolition of the University Grants Committee and the growth of

a tertiary grants committee a tertiary entrance board should be set up to take the place of the Universities Entrance Board, said Mr Wright. At present, no national system of educational liaison between secondary schools and technical institutes existed, although such a system was available to universities through the Universities Entrance Board and the liaison officers. ONE UNION

Regardless of how slowly the Government and the three areas of tertiary education moved towards a coordinated system, it was inevitable that the 50,000 or more students involved would move closer in the next few years towards a National Students’ Union, said Mr Wright “Only through this sort of union and that of a tertiary grants committee will New Zealand avoid some of the worst dangers of uncoordinated educational development.”