Otago Polytechnic will be absorbed into the Open Polytechnic, a move the former is "deeply disappointed" by. Photo: Google Street View
The Tertiary Education Union is calling the government's disestablishment of Te Pūkenga a "disaster for regional New Zealand".
Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds joined Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Monday to announce 10 polytechnics were being re-established.
The Southern Institute of Technology she was chief executive of for 23 years was one of them - as was Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, after Nelson mayor Nick Smith appealed for the government to keep it independent.
He was delighted, saying the govenrment's announcement is "the best news for Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough".
"We are one of New Zealand's most geographically isolated regions, meaning that for many students who cannot relocate for financial or family reasons, NMIT is the only opportunity for them to upskill and gain a tertiary education," he said in a written statement.
"There is now a big job ahead to rebuild NMIT. We look forward to the passage of the legislation and the appointment of a new polytechnic council. Key steps will be re-establishing links with local industry and redeveloping NMIT's international brand and market."
Others were not so lucky. The Open Polytechnic will absorb Otago Polytechnic and UCOL, becoming a "federation" that offers online resources, an academic board and other services to those polytechs struggling with money.
Otago Polytechnic executive director Megan Pōtiki said it was "deeply disappointed" to be included in the federation model.
"Otago Polytechnic currently boasts one of the highest learner completion rates in the polytechnic sector, and we are concerned that the federation model would dilute this offering and impact our organisation's proud reputation and future success. The federation model risks undermining our learner success rates and the quality of teaching ... and ultimately risks undermining our independence and future viability as a regional institution."
Simmonds said polytechs in four other regions - Northland, Taranaki, Wellington, and the West Coast - were facing "unique challenges" and needed to show a path to financial viability within a year - or face being merged, or closed.
Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Tertiary Education Union national secretary Sandra Grey told RNZ the sector had been suffering for 20 years and had become a political football. She said the minister's announcement was just a return to a model that was failing.
"This government has just exacerbated it ... leaving four out in the cold and saying 'you'll just have to do something radically different, like just do online learning then you'll be financially viable' - that's a pretty cruel thing to do to communities.
"That doesn't work so well when what you're teaching is cookery, or carpentry. They're not easy to teach online."
She said most of the four facing an uncertain future were in rural areas which did not have universities and depended on polytechnics to become a hub of learning and industry.
The government's plan, she said, would only deepen the divide between rural and urban learning.
The former Industry Training Organisations would be replaced with Industry Skills Boards, which would set standards for industry training, develop qualifications, and endorse the programmes that would lead to them.
The minister said they would be supported with Quality Assurance to ensure consistency - saying industries would now have a bigger say.
Grey, however, said the plan was problematic because it would require students to go to a temporary holding place for two years - and the government had halved the funding for it.
"This government keeps claiming it's giving communities and industry a big say in their future and yet it's making all the decisions for them, taking away all the money from them.
"They're not thinking about whether it's genuinely going to serve industry or genuinely serve community, I think they've been warned this is not going to work for anyone, they're just going to go ahead because they made a promise. They could renege on that promise, we'd be quite happy if they turned around.
"What we've got to appreciate is these polytechnics are built up over five decades, two generations have put energy, time, taxpayer money into building their polytechnics. These belong to New Zealanders, these polytechnics - and this government is just running roughshod over communities and taking decisions for them and making it impossible to have good training in small communities.
"The long-term cost of people missing out on education is poorer health outcomes for people - so more money spent on the health system - poor outcomes socially because people don't get jobs, and lost tax revenue because when people don't train they don't get jobs and they don't contribute to the tax take.
"We all lose out when communities lose out and when students don't have courses, this is a disaster if we don't turn it around."
Labour's leader Chris Hipkins was the education minister who launched Te Pūkenga. He told Morning Report he would not reinstate mega polytechnic institute Te Pūkenga if elected into government because the sector has suffered too much turbulence.
Hipkins admitted Te Pūkenga was slow too make progress, but said just as the gains are starting to become apparent the government has turned it upside again.
"The great irony here is that Te Pūkenga finally turned a surplus last year. They were making progress and now the government has thrown the whole thing up in the air again and caused chaos up and down the country," he said.
He said the government has returned to a system that was "already failing", as the previous system wasn't responsive enough to business and there wasn't enough focus on learning on the job - something he said Te Pūkenga was trying designed to address.
"Where we were trying to give industry more voice, more decision and more direction on how the system operates, they're taking that away again," Hipkins said.
Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said the government's rhetoric on tertiary education doesn't match its spending.
She said the plan seems likely to fall short.
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