Latest news with #tertiaryeducation
ABC News
01-07-2025
- General
- ABC News
University study hubs help keep students in regional Australia
Tertiary education has largely remained a challenge for people who don't want to leave their regional communities for a city. However, four regional towns in Western Australia have seen the benefit of the Lumen Wheatbelt Regional University Study Hub program. The program gives students enrolled in university or TAFE access to facilities and support rather than completing their education all online. It has been a staged rollout for the hubs since 2022 in the small towns of Merredin, Wongan Hills, Narrogin and York. Former English teacher Natalie Warnock is completing a Master of Education in Merredin, 260 kilometres east of Perth. She said when she started her course, she felt disconnected from the classroom and her peers. "There were no systems or physical supports in place for people living remotely, so it was just me trying to find time to study in between teaching," she said. "I was pretty excited when the study hub came to town. "Because as someone who has been diagnosed with ADHD and is neurodivergent, if I'm left to my own devices nothing tends to get done and it is a last-minute rush. "Now after work I go to the study hub to do my work, I don't have distractions and have a designated space to connect with other like-minded students and staff to answer any questions I may have." York-based musician and former TAFE lecturer Christian Gibbs decided to complete a Diploma of Counselling after noticing a need for mental health support among musicians. For Mr Gibbs, knowing he could access the facilities at his local study hub in York, 100km east of Perth, was a relief. "It was a really big relief to be in a different environment and get out of my head to reframe the learning experience and formalise it a little bit," he said. As a former educator, Mr Gibbs said he had seen first-hand what happened when students did not have access to education support in regional areas. "We need to make sure that the younger generations coming through from long-standing families, and new families coming to towns like York, know that they have options so that they can stay in the town that they love, with the people that they love," Mr Gibbs said. "If we have to travel to get our tertiary education, it's easy to think we have to look for a job and relocate to major cities where these institutions are based. "If we can keep people in their home towns maybe we can get them to see that the jobs they are studying for can have a meaningful application in the town they come from." Wongan Hills business owner Mandy Walker utilises her local study hub to complete her Masters in Economic and Regional Development. For Ms Walker, access to the Wongan Hills hub, 175km north-east of Perth, eliminates the need to commute. "Primarily I needed a space to do my exams, having exclusive access to a room but also having that contact with people again," she said. "It means I don't have to travel to Perth. I can do my day job and have access to the university study hub." Ms Walker said there was a misconception about the availability of career growth in regional areas. "You have the opportunity to step up and into roles that you might not have access to in the city because in the regions there aren't always the people to fill those positions," she said. Program director Elise Woods said regional students often had tough decisions to make before taking up higher education studies. "Many of our students have barriers around their ability to relocate to where you can access a campus, which has financial stress and sometimes emotional stress involved in having to leave home," she said. "A lot of our students are also mature-aged students who already have well-established lives, families and jobs in the regions who aren't in a position to move hours away to complete studies. "We want to see people who live in the regions, study here and go on to work in the regions." Ms Woods said the growth in online learning during the COVID pandemic helped pave the way for the regional hubs. "It was a big wake-up call to universities on what is possible, and to students that they could access education from their homes," she said. "As a WA network we are constantly giving feedback to universities about how they can deliver courses better for regional students." Flinders University emeritus professor John Halsey said the ability to stay in place allowed communities to thrive. "If you have a large outflow of people leaving regional towns to pursue further studies, you are taking rich resources out of the community," Dr Halsey said. "Where university study hubs exist, you're bringing expertise into the town, which stimulates economic activity, and while economic activity is not the be all and end all, it is absolutely critical to the vibrancy of towns." Dr Halsey said attitudinal change towards the contributions made by those living in the regions would help aid the divide in access to education in regional and metropolitan areas.
RNZ News
22-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Polytech job cuts: 'The mood has changed from anger to sadness'
About 300 jobs are under threat at eight polytechs, says the Tertiary Education Union. File photo. Photo: Supplied Job and course cuts across the polytechnic sector are a nightmare, the Tertiary Education Union says. The union estimates that about 300 jobs are under threat at eight of the 16 institutions, with restructuring plans expected shortly from two more. The proposed cuts ranged from performing arts courses in Wellington to agriculture courses in Northland. Tertiary Education Union national secretary Sandra Grey said the institutes were doing what the government had told them to do. "The directive from the government was really, really clear. It was cut, cut, cut until you're financially stable and there's a huge problem with that because when you cut staff numbers, you cut the number of courses, you cut the viability of the institutions. This is a nightmare," she said. Grey said the scale of change was unprecedented. "In any given week I can receive two or three change proposals. That's individual groups of staff being affected, individual courses that are being cut," she said. "In the worst case scenario its almost one-in-five staff and that is massive for those communities as well because not only is that cutting courses for learners but that's taking money out of the local economy." Whitiereia Polytechnic TEU branch president Helen Johnstone said she had never seen anything like it in her 20 years at the institute. "We have had time and time again cuts across that period of time and lots of changes but for me this is the most significant that I have experienced. The most significant in terms of the impact on our particular polytechnic and what services and courses will be available and left for students." Johnstone said staff seemed resigned to the changes. "The mood has actually changed from anger to sadness," she said. "We went along to a staff update meeting and the mood in the room was just silence. I think everybody's in shock... that this is actually happening." Polytechnic and Te Pūkenga managers refused RNZ's request for an interview as did Vocational Education minister Penny Simmonds. But former Otago Polytechnic chief executive Phil Ker agreed the cuts were unprecedented. He said polytechnics had been struggling to make ends meet for years, but they had not all cut courses and staff at the same time. "This so-called viability issue has been around since I took up my chief executive job at Otago in 2004," he said. "There's been all sorts of work put in place at an institutional level to try and survive for the last 20 years plus. So there's always been some staffing reviews and job churn but what we're seeing now is a whole lot happening at the same time." Ker said the current round of cuts was aimed at creating financially-viable, stand-alone institutes but it would not work. "They're standing up on the basis of severe short-term cuts. There isn't a strong under-pinning financial model," he said. "These are all short-term fixes. It's looking for which programmes are the weak links right now, chop them out, shows a short-term benefit on the revenue statement and then a year down the track we'll see something else that's not 'viable' in inverted commas." Ker said the fundamental problem was everyone wanted a polytechnic system but nobody wanted to pay for it, least of all the government. "It's an inconvenient truth that we would like to have a really good vocational education system, but we don't want to pay for it. Employers don't want to pay directly for their training and the government doesn't want to pay adequately their share of the cost." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
17-06-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Vocational Education Penny Simmonds says staff to student ratios at polytechnics abysmal
Vocational education minister Penny Simmonds. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds says the staff to student ratios have been abysmal. Appearing before the Education and Workforce Select Committee to answer questions about the government's Budget decisions for Tertiary Education, Simmonds said institutions' ratio of staff to students was critical for their viability. She said polytechnics had reduced their staff numbers by 8.2 percent on a headcount basis and about 4.9 percent on a full-time equivalent basis but their staff to student ratios were still lower than they were in 2016-17. "Those ratios are critical to the viability of an institution. If you're running at a ratio of less than one to 18 for academic staff to students, you are in financial trouble and they are low," she said. Simmonds said a number of polytechnics were "incredibly damaged by the last four or five years under Te Pūkenga". She said they had lost domestic enrolments, failed to rebuild international enrolments quickly, and had not responded quickly to changes. Simmonds said Te Pūkenga should have addressed staff surpluses at loss-making polytechnics more quickly. She said it had not become financially sustainable, even though it recorded a financial surplus last year. Simmonds and Universities Minister Shane Reti insisted government funding for tertiary education was increasing as a result of the Budget. Committee member and Labour Party MP Shanan Halbert said Budget figures showed total tertiary funding would drop $124m in the 2025/26 financial year to $3.79b. Tertiary Education Commission officials said the drop was due to the end of the previous government's temporary, two-year funding boost and moving the fees free policy to the final year of students' study. Simmonds said the government ended equity funding for Māori and Pacific students because it wanted to target extra funding to needs not ethnicity. She said if a Māori student who was dux of their school enrolled in a polytechnic qualification, their enrolment would attract the equity weighting, even though they had no need of additional support, which she said did not make sense. Tertiary Education Commission chief executive Tim Fowler told the committee enrolments had grown so much that institutions were asking for permission to enrol more students this year than they had agreed with the commission in the investment plans that determined their funding. "We've had most of the universities come to us and ask to exceed their investment plan allocation... over 105 percent this year. In previous years, I think we might have had one in the past decade, so unprecedented levels of enrolments," he said. Fowler said it was the commission's job to balance that growth, favouring government priorities such as STEM subject enrolments and removing funding from under-enrolled courses. "We're continually adjusting in-flight what that investment looks like and where we see areas where there is demand that we want to support we try and move money to it. Where there's areas of under-delivery, we try and take that out as quickly as we possibly can so it doesn't fly back to the centre - we want to reinvest it elsewhere," he said. "The challenge for us this year, there are far fewer areas of under-delivery than there is over-delivery." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
17-06-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds says staff numbers at polytechnics abysmal
Vocational education minister Penny Simmonds. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds says staff numbers at some polytechnics are so high they are abysmal. Appearing before the Education and Workforce Select Committee to answer questions about the government's Budget decisions for Tertiary Education, Simmonds said institutions' ratio of staff to students was critical for their viability. She said polytechnics had reduced their staff numbers by 8.2 percent on a headcount basis and about 4.9 percent on a full-time equivalent basis but their staff to student ratios were still lower than they were in 2016-17. "Those ratios are critical to the viability of an institution. If you're running at a ratio of less than one to 18 for academic staff to students, you are in financial trouble and they are low," she said. Simmonds said a number of polytechnics were "incredibly damaged by the last four or five years under Te Pūkenga". She said they had lost domestic enrolments, failed to rebuild international enrolments quickly, and had not responded quickly to changes. Simmonds said Te Pūkenga should have addressed staff surpluses at loss-making polytechnics more quickly. She said it had not become financially sustainable, even though it recorded a financial surplus last year. Simmonds and Universities Minister Shane Reti insisted government funding for tertiary education was increasing as a result of the Budget. Committee member and Labour Party MP Shanan Halbert said Budget figures showed total tertiary funding would drop $124m in the 2025/26 financial year to $3.79b. Tertiary Education Commission officials said the drop was due to the end of the previous government's temporary, two-year funding boost and moving the fees free policy to the final year of students' study. Simmonds said the government ended equity funding for Māori and Pacific students because it wanted to target extra funding to needs not ethnicity. She said if a Māori student who was dux of their school enrolled in a polytechnic qualification, their enrolment would attract the equity weighting, even though they had no need of additional support, which she said did not make sense. Tertiary Education Commission chief executive Tim Fowler told the committee enrolments had grown so much that institutions were asking for permission to enrol more students this year than they had agreed with the commission in the investment plans that determined their funding. "We've had most of the universities come to us and ask to exceed their investment plan allocation... over 105 percent this year. In previous years, I think we might have had one in the past decade, so unprecedented levels of enrolments," he said. Fowler said it was the commission's job to balance that growth, favouring government priorities such as STEM subject enrolments and removing funding from under-enrolled courses. "We're continually adjusting in-flight what that investment looks like and where we see areas where there is demand that we want to support we try and move money to it. Where there's areas of under-delivery, we try and take that out as quickly as we possibly can so it doesn't fly back to the centre - we want to reinvest it elsewhere," he said. "The challenge for us this year, there are far fewer areas of under-delivery than there is over-delivery." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
ABC News
02-06-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Labor promised to cut HECS so why have student loans increased?
Before the federal election, Labor made a promise to cut student loan debts like HECS and HELP debts by 20 per cent, if it was re-elected. However since June 1, students with a HECS or HELP loan would have seen their debt increase due to indexation; a yearly adjustment to a student loan according to inflation. ABC NewsRadio's Sarah Morice spoke with Dr Melinda Hilderbrandt, an expert in tertiary education policy, about why some loans have gone up despite Labor winning the election.
