Students will be the winners in New Zealand general election
Electioneering has reached its peak in the lead up to New Zealand's general election this week. But for the country's university bosses, the campaign might as well be over.
Despite lobbying strongly on the need for an urgent and significant boost to their funding, universities have lost the battle for political attention to their students.
Though some parties have vaguely promised funding increases to universities, most have pledged even bigger increases for student financial support. Those pledges include abolition of tuition fees and introduction of student loan write-offs.
But the show-stopper has been the ruling Labour party's decision to introduce universal student allowances from 2012 if it is re-elected. Current allowances are available to all students over the age of 24 and to younger students only if their parents earn less than NZ$45,743 a year (£16,453).
Though the Green and New Zealand First parties already had universal allowance policies, they could not realistically be achieved without the support of either of New Zealand's major parties – Labour or National.
Though Labour has now joined them, National has refused – although it has promised improved student loan repayment conditions.
For vice-chancellors, perhaps, the most galling aspect of Labour's policy is its estimated cost – at NZ$210m it is just shy of the NZ$230m they say they urgently need to restore their funding to early 1990s levels and make them competitive with their international peers.
From their point of view, the situation is made worse by the fact that New Zealand already spends 42% of its government funding for tertiary education on student financial support, one of the highest proportions in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The allowance policy is Labour's second consecutive attempt to win votes with a student-focused pledge: in the 2005 election it narrowly triumphed after a surprise announcement that it would abolish interest on the government's student loans.
Though Labour insists it has long held a policy of returning to universal allowances, which were available until the early 1990s, the major newspapers criticised this year's policy announcement as a pre-election bribe.
Bribe or not, current polling indicates Labour will not win sufficient votes to return to power. Instead, the centre-right National party is likely to form a government with one or more coalition partners.
That will be cold comfort for vice-chancellors. Barring a late and surprise announcement from the Nationals, universities have again learned their funding is simply not a vote-winner.
But Prof Stuart McCutcheon, vice-chancellor of New Zealand's largest university, the University of Auckland, believes that might be changing.
McCutcheon notes that when the major newspapers dismissed Labour's universal allowance policy, they mentioned the importance of adequate funding for tertiary institutions.
"People are beginning to understand that endlessly increasing support for students in order to attract votes is not an appropriate strategy when it is clear we are putting the future of universities and their ability to compete internationally at risk," he says.
Prof Pat Walsh, vice-chancellor of Victoria University of Wellington, recently warned that this risk was more pressing than many realise. Walsh says New Zealand's universities could be at a tipping point in their efforts to maintain quality despite under-funding. Efforts to ensure tertiary study was affordable for students could only go so far.
"If the pendulum swings too far toward affordability, students will be able to come to university but the quality will be compromised and this will be to no-one's benefit," he says.
Lincoln University vice-chancellor and chair of the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors' Committee, Roger Field, says New Zealand has one of the highest entry rates to degree-level education in the OECD and its student financial support is generous by international standards.
"Which," he says, "suggests that the tertiary education policy emphasis needs to shift".
· John Gerritsen is New Zealand correspondent for University World News