Different Tracks - a look at the different ways New Zealanders get tertiary qualifications

8 - Technical Notes

Students

The students used in this study come from two cohorts. The first is all those who started a bachelors degree or higher-level qualification at a public tertiary education institution in 1997. The second group is all those who started a formally assessed certificate or diploma below degree level, of longer than a week's duration at a public or private tertiary education provider in 2000. Both domestic and international students are included.

1997 is used for the degree cohort to allow a long, 10-year window to be used in which to track pathways and outcomes. As shown in this report, there are many students who complete a degree after the five-year window that is often used in published Ministry of Education completion rate tables. The disadvantage of using a longer timeframe is that the tertiary education system under which these students began is becoming increasingly different to the system today's starting students face, and so care is needed when inferring current patterns of transfer, progression and completion from these past patterns.

2000 is used for the certificate and diploma students, and so a 7 (instead of 10) year window is available for tracking pathways and outcomes. The one and two year nature of such programmes, affords us the opportunity to use more recent cohorts. This is particularly important for certificate and diploma study as most of the changes in participation in New Zealand's tertiary education system over the last decade have occurred below degree level from 2000. The year 2000, also allows PTE students to be included (PTE data was not available in 1997). It picks up PTE students at the height of their growth, and wananga students at the start of their significant growth period.

Course and Qualifications

The term 'course' used in this report, refers to a distinct module, paper, or unit of study that forms part of a larger programme of study that may or may not lead towards a recognised qualification. This is different from other countries, such as Australia or Britain, where the term 'course' is also commonly used to refer to a programme of study or a qualification.

All bachelors qualifications referred to in this study exclude graduate certificates or diplomas. Bachelors with honours degrees, and postgraduate certificates and diplomas are grouped as one level. Historically, universities have structured honours degrees differently, in that the normal pathway is transfer to honours after one year of bachelors study for some, while a one-year postgraduate honours qualification is the pathway for others. This will therefore influence the patterns of transfer and progression reported for this level.

Completion rate

Current Ministry of Education statistics define the qualification completion rate as the percentage of students starting a level of study who complete a qualification at that same level. One of the aims of this study was to explore completion at higher and lower levels. In particular, to gauge to what extent Ministry rates understate qualification completion by excluding those who completed a higher-level qualification than the one they started. Note that the definition of a 'starter' hasn't been changed. It's anyone who enrolled in a qualification at that level for the first time. As such, these rates still exclude those who started a subsequent qualification at the same level in later years. Also, under the definition, it does not matter if the student does not complete the same qualification they began, only that they complete a qualification at the same level or higher.

Two types of rates are discussed in this report, system rates and provider rates. The system rate includes all people who complete, regardless of whether or not they completed at the same provider they started at. The provider rate excludes people who transfer and complete at a different provider.  This section that discusses the impact of transfer on individual provider rates uses the arithmetic average of each provider's completion rate. This will produce slightly different rates to the rates used in the remained of this study which are based on overall rate across all providers combined. For example, Provider A with 1,000 starters, and 500 completers has a completion rate of 50%. Provider B with 2,000 starters and 1,200 completers has a completion rate of 60%. The average provider completion rate based on these two providers is (50%+60%)/2 = 55%. The combined completion rate = (500+1,200) / (1,000+2,000) = 57%

The completion rates used in this report may differ from those produced by the Tertiary Education Commission because of differences in the historical starting year used, the longer 7 or 10 year timeframe, and small differences in definitions.

Transfer rate

For this study, the term 'transfer' is used to refer to only those students who changed providers before they completed their starting qualification. Data on students who changed providers after completing a qualification is also included in this report, but the term 'transfer' has been reserved in this study for analysing patterns of change before completion.

Progression rate

Current Ministry statistics define 'progression' as the percentage of graduates or completing students who enrol in subsequent study, and 'higher progression' refers to those graduates or completing students who enrol in higher-level study.

However, for this study the term 'progression' refers to the percentage of starting students who eventually enrol in higher-level study (over some defined period). It does not matter whether they've completed their original qualification, only whether they've subsequently enrolled in a higher-level qualification.

This definition has the advantage of identifying a significant minority of students who go on to higher-level study indirectly, after perhaps, doing another qualification at the same, or a lower level as their first one.

Provider changes

In order to take account of provider mergers, closures and re-designations over the period 1997 to 2006, this study treated each provider according to their status in 2007. For example, Auckland Institute of Technology is treated as a university throughout. Similarly, all colleges of education are treated as part of the universities they merged with, as with all ITPs that merged or closed during this period. All university information therefore includes students who were enrolled in colleges of education, regardless of whether those students were ever part of the university after the merger.