Lining Up? The influence of the Tertiary Education Strategy 2002/07 on tertiary education organisation profile objectives Publications

Publication Details

This report presents an analysis of the 2005/07 and 2006/08 profiles of tertiary education institutions and a sample of industry training organisations. This analysis looked at the organisational objectives in the profiles and mapped them to the Tertiary Education Strategy to establish a sense of where change is planned across the various areas of the strategy, and by which types of organisations. The analysis provides a view of governance and senior management perspectives of important changes in their organisations in relation to the Tertiary Education Strategy.

Author(s): Dee Earle, Tertiary Sector Performance Analysis and Reporting, Ministry of Education.

Date Published: August 2006

Summary

Main Findings

In general, the analysis shows a consistently strong change-focus on the following areas of the strategy:

  • Develop the skills New Zealanders need for our knowledge society
  • Te rautaki mātauranga Māori – contribute to the achievement of Māori development aspirations
  • Strengthen system capability and quality.

The areas with less consistent change-focus were:

  • Raise foundation skills so that people can participate in our knowledge society
  • Strengthen research, knowledge creation and uptake for our knowledge society
  • Educate for Pacific Peoples' development and success.

Across the four theme areas of the 2005 Statement of Tertiary Education Priorities, the analysis shows that, from the 2005/07 to the 2006/08 profiles, there has been:

  • increased change-focus on investing in excellence, with significantly more tertiary education organisations focusing on effective teaching and high quality research
  • decreased change-focus on increasing relevance, largely as a result of changes introduced in 2004 and 2005 being embedded as business as usual in 2006
  • increased change-focus on enabling students and learners to access excellent and relevant tertiary education, particularly for Māori, Pasifika and youth transitions
  • increased change-focus on enhancing capability.

The analysis also found that in each year, around two-thirds of TEO responses were concentrated in 10 out of 27 areas used for analysis. At the other end of the scale, there were six areas of analysis that accounted for only 5 percent of TEO responses.

These areas of high and low response varied across the two years. A further look at the areas of increased response between the two years showed that the areas with the greatest increase were all linked to actual or proposed changes in the funding system.

The report also analysed some response areas against characteristics of the tertiary education institutions - such as student characteristics and financial indicators. This analysis highlighted several areas where the presence of objectives in those areas can be statistically related to the characteristics of the institution. It highlighted other areas which are more universally addressed irrespective of the institutional characteristics.

Footnote

  1. A 'response' is counted as a TEO with one or more change-focused objectives in a particular area of analysis.

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