KEY POINTS:
Auckland University's vice-chancellor says a proposal that would allow many tertiary institutions to call themselves universities is "madness".
Stuart McCutcheon said the plans in the Education Amendment Bill would create a tier of "pseudo-universities".
The new tier could harm the university system, and reduce the quality of vocational training offered by institutes of technology and polytechnics (ITPs), he said.
But Dave Guerin, executive director of ITP New Zealand, said McCutcheon's claims were "hot air" and his group supported the name change - if not the bill in its present form.
McCutcheon said the bill was "fundamentally flawed" in trying to introduce another separate tier of institution. He said there was a snobbery attached to the word "university", but it was coming from the ITPs rather than the universities.
"It's not a matter of one being above the other. We do different things. We are equally valuable, but different."
McCutcheon said the country needed more emphasis on vocational education by ITPs, rather than the growth of "pseudo universities".
Guerin described the university sector's opposition to the bill as "an immature and defensive response".
"It's really about branding, like when AUT wanted to become a university," he said.
"It's a phrase which has a lot of cachet around the world, particularly for international students."
