Education for all New Zealanders, not for profit Many kiwis living in regional towns and small rural communities must have a sense of déjà vu. I’m thinking of those kiwis that lived through the 1980s and 1990s when rural and regional post offices, schools, and hospitals were ‘rationalised’ and closed; those who watched as state assets were sold without regard to what that meant for telephone and power services to their communities; those who were ignored because these actions had to be taken to ‘balance the country’s books’. Roll on 2012. Another government is looking to balance the country’s books and again it seems the cost of this will hit rural communities hard. Some of the austerity measures – such as state asset sales – have made headlines around New Zealand. But what about some of the other costs of austerity budgets which are often hidden away from public scrutiny? For example, we need to examine the cost of the government’s deliberate underfunding of tertiary education provision in smaller communities around the country. The amount money the government spends on tertiary education around New Zealand has fallen over the last few years at the very time when the number of students has risen (in part the growth in student numbers is due to attempts by New Zealanders to get themselves off growing dole queues). The government’s underfunding is so severe that by 2014 the gap between the cost of providing quality tertiary education in New Zealand and the amount of money the government invests in education will be $1.1bn. And our regional polytechnics are feeling the financial squeeze the most felt. is. Annual reports show that last year government funding to twelve of New Zealand’s polytechnics fell 4.4 percent or $17 million. The polytechnics that have been the worst hit by 2011 funding cuts were regional polytechnics such as Aoraki in Timaru, where the government grant fell by 19 per cent or $4 million, Te Tai Poutini in Westport where the grant fell by 14 per cent or $3 million, and NorthTec in Whangarei where the government grant fell by 13 per cent or $4 million. So what does this mean in real terms? It means there are fewer staff and crowded classrooms; it means courses in small communities being cut altogether because they are ‘uneconomic’.
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