Lecturers’ perks to be targeted?

Press, 11 July 1988, Page 4

Lecturers’ perks to be targeted?

PA Hamilton University and polytechnic staff who use their extended summer break as a holiday perk could be in for a shake-up, says the Associate Minister of Education, Mr Goff.

He said this was an area where those institutions could make better use of their resources, rather than putting their hands out for more Government money. Mr Goff told a Waikato Polytechnic staff seminar in Hamilton on Friday the days of bigger and bigger hand-outs were gone. The Government’s immediate priority was to tackle a huge overseas debt. He said he knew, as a former university teacher, the theory of staff using the summer break to

work on research projects and the like was a myth in many cases. Some staff did work through, but others took oh second jobs or treated the break as an extra paid holiday. That time could be better spent on staff training, he said. The seminar on accountability in polytechnic education was told that polytechnics needed to find out what was achieved once students finished courses, rather

than concentrating on what went into the system.

Waikato Polytechnic, for example, generated 8 per cent of the student hours calculated across the country last year. “But what is known about the number of students who found jobs, course satisfaction, or whether courses met skill requirements of the future?” Mr Goff asked. “There is a need to

ensure this is clearly reported and known to the client groups — the individual, the State, industry and the community.” The polytechnic sector was already playing a tremendous role in education, but there were still improvements to be made, he said. Polytechnic funding had increased 154 per cent in the last three years, but had not satisfied demand. The Hawke committee on post-compulsory education was considering re-

ports on tertiary education in recent years and looking at how best to administer it. The Picot and Probine Fargher reports indicated more responsibility being given to individual institutions. The system of the Education Department approving courses was likely to disappear and institutions would have hard choices to make with limited resources. Institutions could no longer say “the depart-

ment would not approve the course,” he said.

Use of buildings would have to be examined with a view to using them more effectively. Organising double shifts to make better use of specialist rooms and workshops was a possibility, so was cooperating with other institutions to share facilities. Course structures, lengths, and timetabling might be improved. Selfpaced learning using computers would allow more flexible use of tutors.

The prospect of students being made to pay back some of the cost of their education once they were earning healthy salaries needed to be investigated, he said. Australia had explored it. Some polytechnics were already running business-related courses which recovered their own costs.

The Government did not have the money it needed to meet the demand for tertiary education, so savings had to be made at the local level, Mr Goff said.