by Gareth Hughes
Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce (who by the way still hasn’t responded to my drinking challenge, but that’s a different blog) yesterday announced his appointees to Polytechnic Councils.
Last year the Government changed the law to end representative democracy on polytechnic boards, and replace them with a smaller number of Government-appointed positions.
We loudly opposed the changes at the time, arguing that they would lead to increased corporatisation of our tertiary education sector, and a lack of staff, student, and Maori voices in the governance of their institutions.
Almost everyone who made a submission to the select committee about the change expressed the same fears.
It seems these fears have now been confirmed by the Minister’s appointments which include not one staff or student representative. Search “student” in the document listing the appointees and their qualifications and you get not one single hit.
It’s also alarming that only 20 out of Joyce’s 78 appointees are women, as the Tertiary Women’s Focus Group noted this morning. There’s really no excuse for such gender imbalance, especially when women make up the majority of those enrolled in tertiary study.
The one silver lining is that a good number of the Minister’s appointments are Maori, meaning he has hopefully taken some of the concerns of tangata whenua into account in his decisions. In the face of the gender imbalance and the lack of staff and students however, the overall picture is still extremely disappointing.
The only hope now is that the community representative positions, yet to be announced, will live up to their name and represent the community. Yet whoever is announced in those positions, the fact that the Minister doesn’t think staff, students, or many women are important enough to be involved in the running of tertiary institutions in the first instance tells you a lot, and leaves me in no great heart about the future of these institutions, or the priorities of this Minister.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Gareth Hughes on Thu, April 15th, 2010
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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No – this doesn’t seem to sum up this and other moves away from democracy. A nannystate provides token participation and democracy, as we saw with the water forum, the Nats diddn’t even give the token water forum a token opportunity to have a token say in Canterbury.
How many signatures do you need to force an election? 10%? I think this lot will have aggravated at least 10% of voters already.
Lets kick em out! even just as a warning for future govts not to act so undemocratically.
Kick em out!
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I thing Chairman Joyce has a grudge against education stemming from the DNC’s on his academic record.
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This goes hand in hand with the opting out of student associations bill, under the guise of personal freedom. By the end of this term of government we will see the devolving of power to a select few in most of our public institutions and those that may provide the most opposition will be weakened. Unions, student associations and National Radio need our support.
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but most of us students don’t want unions.
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no it’s what we want, the govt supports us then sweet! evidence points to it, it isn’t just my view. divided we have a true voice, our own, untarnished.
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stephensmikm-but are those voices in your head really yours…….?
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yes. This conclusion was made without any consideration of any political support by myself and many others – submissions will show that, yes a number will have supported or opposed because of party influences but the majority will have made up their own minds. I did, many others did, the international community did, and the government will hopefully respond accordingly.
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Gee whiz guys, haven’t we been over this, the UN has said that we shouldn’t be compelled to be members of an association – Done
Currently we are financially compelled to be members as the sunk cost of our association fees do not get reimbursed if we chose to leave, this derides any argument to say we are not compelled because students choosing to leave would be out of pocket with no benefit – financial compulsion. – Done
It’s great to have students associations and I have no problem with them, I just agree (as do most) with the UN that we shouldn’t be compelled to be members of these associations. To be against students choice in this matter (VSM) then you are against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 20 -Done (yes it really is that simple)
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