Put locals back in control? Why localised duplication can be destructive

Brit Bunkley.

Opinion:

Regarding the National Party candidate’s op-ed, “Put locals back in control of UCOL”, I feel that centralisation in some form must be enacted. Rampant duplication in a nation with the population of metropolitan Sydney is wasteful and irrational.

After answering an advertisement in an art university jobs catalogue in the USA in 1995 for a new art school in New Zealand, I was hired as “head of sculpture” at Whanganui Polytechnic out of purportedly 120 applications.

At that time, our art school’s BFA degree programme was fifth in the nation. Some students chose our art school at Whanganui over those at the University of Auckland and the University of Canterbury. In a 1998 article in The Dominion, the art school at what was then Wanganui Polytechnic was called “arguably the best art school in the country”. (November 28, p26, by Pauline Swain). We soon had an exchange programme with the Rhode Island School of Design, rated among the best art schools in the world. The sculpture programme had two students chosen for honourable mention in the prestigious Sculpture Magazine student award section (often reserved for postgraduate students), the only art school to do so in Australasia.

However, by 2006 New Zealand reportedly had 21 BFA “degrees”. This duplication was in a nation that could sensibly only accommodate five or six. Most degrees replicated each other’s courses while being squeezed of shrinking resources due to decreasing student numbers. Within 10 years, many of these art schools closed, including ours. The competitive model was a resounding failure. It soon became clear by the mid-2000s that rational centralised action was needed.

National, who spearheaded this “localised” duplication of degrees in the 90s, has not learned its lesson. Many lives were disrupted and ruined because of this archaic, ideological neoliberal policy of ersatz “competition”, resulting in an astoundingly senseless duplication of resources.

Furthermore, UCOL’s direction from Palmerston North has hardly been “local”. Three UCOL lecturers in the art programme (including myself) travelled to Wellington when the original local polytechnic faltered in 2000 to talk to the then deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton and the Minister of Tertiary Education, Steve Maharey. We were hoping to amalgamate with the University of Waikato at the time. We had spent years in negotiation doing so. Steve Maharey instead opted for UCOL.

The polytechnic was initially given millions by Maharey to uphold the “flagship degrees” of art, design, and fashion for the takeover by Palmerston North’s UCOL.

UCOL began a competing design programme with a fine arts component on their Palmerston North campus. Many thought that our art school had closed. Our student numbers plummeted. The art degree ended in 2015.

I have heard of few nations where such disruption of the tertiary education system has been so abrupt and destructive - much of it thanks to National’s original failed “localised” competitive model. It is time to move on.