Our 2011 election manifesto - Labour Party

TERTIARY EDUCATION
Our vision
The quality of our tertiary sector underpins our economic success as a country. It enhances
our ability to innovate and grow, enables individuals to reach their potential and lifts both
individual prosperity and the overall health of our society. Importantly, it also encourages
participation in our country‟s future through healthy well-informed debate and policy being
developed that is based on evidence.
A workforce with greater educational and skill levels is directly linked to higher worker
productivity that is critical to the growth of the NZ economy which suffers from one of the
lowest levels of labour productivity in the OECD.
Our education system is world class but, unless it receives sustained investment in both
research and teaching, it is likely to fall behind. Like-sized developed countries, such as
Finland, Denmark and Singapore, have experienced high levels of economic growth by
focussing on excellent research, innovation and maintaining a high quality of graduates and
a skilled workforce. We need to lift our sights and better translate the high quality of our
schools into the tertiary sector.
The global recession has highlighted education as an essential investment to respond to the
changes in technology and employment. We do not know exactly the make-up of the future
workforce. But we do know that our rapidly changing economy and society will demand not
only that a higher proportion of our young people hold a tertiary qualification but that our
entire workforce has the opportunity to continually up-skill and retrain. Access to quality
tertiary education for all New Zealanders, throughout their working life, therefore, is at heart
of Labour‟s vision for our future.
A collaborative sector
Labour believes that as a small country with limited resources we need to ensure that the
money we spend on tertiary education is targeted towards clear outcomes in terms of
teaching and research.
We need to encourage a culture of collaboration among our tertiary providers. While
competition among institutions can support innovation and raise standards of research, in
our country of 4.4 million people left unfettered it can also lead to unnecessary and costly
duplication.
Labour will, through the Tertiary Education Commission, develop a more
collaborative approach to tertiary education in New Zealand by reviewing and reinvigorating
the network of provision approach to funding, and direct funding through
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