What is the direction forward for Victoria University?
Questions like this get asked regularly and to most extent we as students have little control over the university and our wider existance in general. That the university is asking students for their opinions on the strategic plan is new and interesting, it hasn’t been done before. The question i’d be asking is “what does it matter?”, “show us how we actually have a say on the university itself”.
The university is going through a series of interconnected changes. These are the times of education reforms. Auckland is severly restricting entry, using ‘quality’ and ‘excellence’ as ways in which to take the institution back to a more elitist approach (not that it hasn’t been very elitist to date).
Yes not everyone needs to go to university. Polytech and apprenticeships are important parts of societal education. The privitisation of these areas is staggering. What was exected of the bosses in the past i.e. on the job training, now is provided at the easily applied for $6000 two year course. Not everyone needs a university education.Employers do not look first for your degree. Your volunteering/work exerience is key. Yet I defend everyones’ ability to enter university. We have no clear methodology for accepting or denying people into tertiary education. secondary schooling is a joke in that respect, it is the unreality if nothing else.
Yet that is the situation facing the university. Unreality. The funding model is changing, but no major changes are being made to actual funding levels, which proportionally have been on the wane since the seventies and the end of the post war boom.
We’re changing from a fully EFTS (bums’ on seats (or inputs)) scheme to a mix of partial EFTS and partial PBRF (commodified research (or outputs)). Yet the money supply is not increasing to cover this. We’ve just moving the same money around, robbing Peter to pay Paul. All this leads to is deciding who gains more and who loses. Which while not trying to sound conspiracy theorist, makes for an interesting time for the university wanting our say in how things are run. Because right now. Who ever is involved in making any calls at Victoria University is making calls on who gets fired and what subjects get culled.
I don’t like to sound mean or harsh. But Education has little future at Victoria University. Bar it continuing as a niche subject. PBRF does not favour it. The government has gradually cut funding since the early 90’s by about 30% in real terms. Education will at current rates cost VUW money in the next PBRF round, students (including education) will suffer. This university has decided that it is not a core ‘strength’ and that Education, like Film as well as Gender and Women’s Studies needs rationalising. The university asks “Will it steer decision making on resource allocation, expansion, and retraction?”, resource allocation and retractions. Those are the decisions facing the university. Issues like the commercialisation of intellectual property rights. We measure this through blunt and narrow benchmarks. PBRF does not inform the quality of research or the researcher per se, it gives an indication, one indication. The same as secondary school grades. They provide an indication, but nothing approaching a general indication. I’m not taking part in the ritual cull of the humanities.
What is the value of a course or a lecturer? How do we measure it? We measure it at the outcry from the public at the threats to G&WS and Film School. We measure it in the inspiration of students and society from the role of academics in public life. These are intangible and can’t be measured. VUW is only heading for public shame if it continues on the path trodden so far this year. Student/public outcry is one of the biggest selfidentified by VUW currently.
It is the working class who we owe our allegiance to. It is they who continue to work and allow us to exist in our tertiary unreality. That it is the public keeping the university honest is a bizarre turn, but one in line with the university’s role as business and the trainer of white collar workers.
We can do something about this. It isn’t easy. We succeeded with film school and we can win with G&WS, but compromise is all we face unless we alter the path and change direction. This then is not about VUW at all. It comes back to the system. To capitalism itself. Until then we manage an unmanageable system. We can fight it. We must fight it. What say should we have in university management? THE say. But there’s an old union maxim “When the boss starts asking you for advice, you know you’re being lined up to take the fall.”.
The intention from VUW is honourable. Students should have and demand a say in the operations of the University. It is your responsibility as a student to stand tall and say that. But I will not be made responsible for making the sorts of cuts that this change in funding structure brings about, neither should students. The rational for these are all too short sighted and narrow.