Universities as State bodies suggested

Press, 2 December 1987, Page 6

Universities as State bodies suggested

PA Wellington The Business Roundtable has suggested to the Government that existing universities, polytechnics, and teachers colleges should become autonomous State corporations.

The “Dominion” obtained a confidential first draft of the influential big business lobby group’s submission to the present review of tertiary education.

The group comprises about 30 of New Zealand’s top chief executives and is chaired by the Fletcher Challenge chairman, Sir Ron Trotter, who is involved in sponsoring a private university planned for Auckland in 1989.

It proposes that existing tertiary education institutions should become autonomous State corporations funded by tuition fees, research funds, capitalraising, and the sale of goods and services.

New institutions could enter the tertiary education services field and be eligible to receive entitlements, research funds, and capital grants in terms of Government policy, the proposal says. The University Students’ Association said last evening that corporatisation of the public system would fit in well with the recently announced plans involving some Roundtable members to form a private university in Auckland.

The Tasman University proposal said that if the Government introduced user-pays in education then the Tasman University would be better placed in the market, said the association’s president, Bidge Smith.

“The Roundtable are cynically using increased autonomy and efficiency to support their plans for increased privatisation of the education sector,” she said.

The submission says there are unnecessary weaknesses in the present tertiary education system which is not well designed to meet the present challenge of national economic reconstruction.

Accountability is diffused in an ambiguous command structure characterised by a sea of committees, the Business Roundtable says. Reforming’ the system to make it more accountable and responsive requires more direct political control, which would destroy the intellectual vigour and integrity of tertiary institutions as places of learning, the proposal says. The other option is a “client-driven” approach with more decentralised and indirect methods of funding tertiary institutions. This is the option the Business Roundtable favours.

It proposes a tertiary education commission be formed to administer the Government’s tertiary education budget. The budget would be divided between a tertiary access entitlements committee, a research agencies committee, and a capital funding committee.