Alfred J. Taylor writing in  Tasmanian publication The Mercury in 1885. Overpressure in education – an inevitable consequence of payment by results. A protest and a warning to parents. Open publication – Free publishing – More education A Victoria University TEU member sent this to us a few weeks ago – it [...]

Tertiary Update Vol 15 No 16 Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson is proposing extensivechanges to employment law, which include allowing employers to walk away from collective agreement negotiations. Cabinet approved the changes this week and they will likely go before Parliament this year. TEU national secretary Sharn Riggs says the changes will [...]

A thousand people have so far signed a nascent petition calling on the minister of tertiary education to preserve democratic staff, student and community representation on university councils. The minister, Mr Joyce, last week said he wants to reform university councils, and that they currently are large and unwieldy. In 2009 the [...]

TEU members at Manukau Institute of Technology had intended to hold a lunchtime barbecue for Wiri’s locked-out AFFCO workers tomorrow. Members who brought food to donate to the locked out workers and their families would have received a sausage sizzle in return. However, MIT’s chief executive Dr Peter Brothers vetoed [...]

Finance minister Bill English will unveil an austere ‘zero’ 2012 budget next week. The zero, budget (meaning there will be no overall increase in spending, even to account for inflation) is being preceded by several pre-budget announcements highlighting  some areas that will see increased spending as well as preparing voters [...]

Lobbying efforts by TEU and others mean that the Tertiary Education Commission will change the way it calculates and reports on PBRF ranking. Currently researchers rated R or R (NE) are included in a tertiary institution’s Average Quality Score. TEU argued that this led to a number of universities targeting R [...]

inister of tertiary education, Steven Joyce, says he wants to reform university councils. He says they are large and unwieldy. In 2009 the government pushed through similar changes for polytechnic councils. Those changes reduced councils down to eight members, four of whom are directly appointed by the minister and the remaining four are [...]

As TPP negotiations got underway in Dallas USA on 8 May, American public advocacy group Public Citizen launched an animated video “TPP: The Ultimate Corporate Power Tool”, a parody based on the classic Jackson 5 song “ABC”. Although it’s US focused it is a great clip and the message works [...]