Tertiary education rivals cry foul over Budget

By DITA DE BONI education reporter

A crackdown on the country's 400 private tertiary institutions detailed in yesterday's Budget may mean niche-area or low-income students lose access to higher education, providers say.

A new funding framework for the entire tertiary sector will effectively prune the number of privately run programmes and give preferential treatment to public institutions such as universities, polytechnics and wananga for the first time in more than a decade.

Although the overall tertiary sector will get a $400 million boost over the next four years, subsidies to private providers will be set at 10 per cent less than public institutions from next year.

Funding to the private sector will be "ring-fenced" at $146 million, and the number of funded enrolments will be capped at last year's levels.

"[Private providers] fill important niches ... but the rate of growth has been high in the last three years," Tertiary Education Minister Steve Maharey said in his Excellence, Relevance and Access funding document released yesterday.

"There has been too much unhealthy competition for students, too much duplication of courses, and the Government wants to ensure best value for money."

But the president of the Association of Private Education Providers, Kevin Smith, says the sector is disappointed and very concerned about new restrictions. He predicts some providers may choose to close their doors rather than face an uncertain future.

"The private sector provides innovative programmes which are filling in the gaps of the public system and providing education to groups of students - such as those in remote or low-income areas - that cannot access the public system," Mr Smith said.

"It feels like we are being punished because of it."

Private providers teach roughly 40,000 students, or 15 per cent of the total tertiary student body, and consume 8 per cent of the Government's budget.

They have been largely responsible for growth in Maori and Pacific Island student numbers in tertiary education, but have come under fire from the public sector for competing with regional polytechnics and diverting public funding.

Mark Hellyer of AdventureEducation, a private tertiary provider training 2000 students each year, says the Budget constrains the private sector on the basis of ownership instead on focusing on providing students who meet employer needs, "which ultimately shows student and employer needs are second to those of Government priorities".

But the Association of University Staff has welcomed controls on the growth of profit-making education providers, saying deregulation resulted in a "huge flow of funds from the public sector into a relatively unregulated private sector".

Association of Polytechnics director Jim Doyle said private institutions should "never have been getting capital works money" and he was glad to see that stopped.

He said the Government had now clearly signalled that public institutions were the basis for delivery of tertiary education, with private providers supplementing that.

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