Maryan Street

The government is setting up the wrong incentives in its intention to fund tertiary education institutions according to pass rates, says Labour's Tertiary Education Spokesperson, Maryan Street.

"Steven Joyce announced this morning that the government is going to phase in a system of funding which is dependent upon an institution's ability to pass students," she said.

"This system will apply enormous pressure to staff in those institutions to get people over the line and give them pass marks, regardless of whether or not they are good enough. Perversely, this system could lead to a lowering of academic standards, not the improvement in skills which this country needs to fit us for future jobs and economic development.

"In my experience, our universities, polytechnics and wananga pride themselves on maintaining high academic and technical standards in order to attract and retain quality staff and students. The government's proposed funding model sets them up to offer less challenging courses in order to get more students passing, or even worse, to lower the standards of existing course and programmes in order to meet as yet undetermined numbers of course completions and passes," said Maryan Street.

"Instead of looking at the complex range of reasons why people fail at tertiary education, and finding ways of addressing those issues, the government is risking our international standards and reputation in order to make our tertiary education system as cheap as possible to the government.

"Perhaps the government could review its priorities - we could have fewer new roads and more people completing a quality tertiary education," said Maryan Street.