Tertiary resourcing
Statistics relating to the funding and resourcing of tertiary education in New Zealand, including tuition subsidies, tuition fees and human resources.
Financial performance of tertiary education institutionsUpdated: May 2023
Statistics relating to the financial performance of tertiary education institutions, including universities, institutes of technology and polytechnics, and wānanga can be found on the Tertiary Education Commission website.
Financial ResourcesDue: December 2023
Updated financial resources data will be published soon.
StaffingUpdated: April 2023
At the end of every year the Ministry collects aggregated staff numbers (headcount and full-time equivalent) by a range of characteristics such as full-time or part-time status, sub-sector, staff-type (academic, research and other staff), gender, ethnic group, and age group.
These workforce returns come from eight universities, 16 subsidiaries of Te Pūkenga, three wānanga and 184 private training establishments (PTEs).
- Staffing 2022 [MS Excel 1.1mB]
What does the 2022 data show?
- In 2022, the total staff headcount in tertiary education providers was 50,615, remaining almost unchanged from 2021 (50,550). Full-time equivalent (FTE) numbers were also stable at 36,350 in 2022.
- Staff headcounts in public providers overall were similar in 2022 compared with 2021. However, while university staff headcounts increased by one percent to 30,235 and Te Pūkenga increased one percent to 11,790, at wānanga staff headcounts decreased by 20 percent to 1,740. Staff headcount at PTEs remained similar at 6,850. FTE numbers followed a similar pattern.
- Staff headcounts in 2022 were one percent lower overall than pre-Covid in 2019, while the overall FTE was one percent higher.
- The percentage of academic staff who were Māori increased from seven percent in 2021 to eight percent in 2022 at universities, increased from 15 percent to 17 percent at PTEs and remained unchanged at Te Pūkenga (13 percent) and wānanga (81 percent).
- The percentage of academic staff who were Pacific Peoples increased from two percent in 2021 to three percent in 2022 at universities, decreased from five percent to four percent at Te Pūkenga and remained unchanged at wānanga (five percent) and PTEs (seven percent).
- Among senior academic staff (professors, associate professors, deans and heads of department) at universities, 36 percent were female in 2022, increasing from 34 percent in 2021.
- The ratio of students (EFTS) to academic staff (FTE) decreased for universities (from 19.4 students per academic staff member in 2021 to 18.6 in 2022), Te Pūkenga (16.9 to 15.0) and PTEs (13.4 to 11.9). It increased at wānanga from 20.6 students per academic staff member to 23.0.
- The ratio of students to academic staff in public providers has fluctuated over the Covid-19 pandemic: it decreased from 18.5 in 2019 to 18.0 in 2020, then increased to 18.7 in 2021 before falling to 17.6 in 2022.
- As shown in Figure 1, academic staff numbers have remained relatively constant at universities and Te Pūkenga from 2019 to 2022, despite fluctuations in student enrolments over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. By contrast, academic staff numbers at wānanga have tended to align with changes in student numbers.
Figure 1: Academic staff and students at public providers, 2016-2022, by sub-sector
Figure 1 shows changes in the number of academic staff (FTE) at public providers, compared with student numbers (EFTS). The scales are set so that the staff and student lines for each sub-sector will overlap at a ratio of 20 students to 1 academic staff member.