Reaffirming key principles

Professor Cheryl de la Rey
Tumu Whakarae | Vice-Chancellor
University of Canterbury
Chair of the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors’ Committee

An important focus of the New Zealand Vice Chancellors’ Committee (NZVCC) this year has been our engagement with Sir Peter Gluckman and members of the University Advisory Committee. Our discussions have traversed a range of key questions from the role of universities in society, governance and our core activities of teaching, research and knowledge transfer.

The UAG process has several consultation phases throughout the year, with the final report going to government in February 2025. For each phase the UNZ team has drafted submissions that reflect the collective perspective of the Vice-Chancellors. As with our submission for Phase One that considered the role of universities in New Zealand and the shape of the sector, the process of writing the second submission provided the Vice Chancellors a welcome opportunity to reflect on our views on some important key principles. 

You can read the submission for Phase 2 in full linked in the August newsletter, or here. But for now, I want to highlight some of the overarching messages that are key to the submission, and that we have encouraged the UAG to keep in mind as they write their report.

Excellence: From the outset, it’s important to restate what I hope is already well known. By every metric we can identify, New Zealand has an excellent university system, with strong student outcomes, high graduate employment rates and all eight universities ranked in the top 500 globally.

Complex organisations: Over the last 50 years, successive governments have invested in higher education in recognition of the nation’s evolution as a knowledge economy. With this comes greater expectations for universities to be responsive to government priorities. Universities have evolved in line with these expectations – becoming large complex enterprises requiring substantial coordination and specialisation.

Institutional autonomy: The sector has a high level of institutional autonomy and academic freedom. This is appropriate and entirely in-line with the policy and operating settings that exist for publicly funded universities in the overseas university systems we most frequently compare ourselves with – the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Financial sustainability: In New Zealand the main problem our universities are dealing with is income. Since 2019, government funding has increased by just 9% during a time when inflation has been 24%. Ultimately, it’s this funding squeeze that limits universities’ ability to invest in priority areas and threatens long-term sustainability.

The higher education ecosystem: Finally, we ask the UAG to remember that universities are not the entire higher education system. ITPs (Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics), wānanga, and some private training providers also provide degree and postgraduate level teaching and conduct research that attracts Crown research funding (including PBRF). It’s important for UAG’s thinking about strategy, coordination, differentiation, and investment needs to reflect the complexity of this system.