Tertiary Education Minister Michael Cullen last week tabled a Bill intended to provide the legal mechanisms for current tertiary education reforms to deliver “a simpler, more focused and streamlined tertiary education sector.”
According to a release from Cullen, the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill “implements the government’s reform of the system for the planning, funding, and monitoring of the provision of tertiary education.”
If passed, the Bill would simplify and streamline institutions’ relationships with government and lower costs, based on a “three-yearly, controlled, and outcome-based system.”
Cullen said, “One of the aims of these reforms is to give our tertiary education organisations much clearer boundaries. Universities, wananga, institutes of technology and polytechnics, industry training organisations, and private training establishments all have distinctive and important roles to play in education, training, research, higher scholarship, and in building knowledge and understanding.”
Debating on the Bill begins this week. The Government aims to pass it before the end of the year, for the new system to take effect on January 1 2008.