A couple of months ago, I was part of a panel discussion on the future of tertiary education, hosted by the Tertiary Education Union. It wanted a forecast of the future of skills in a world of technological change: what should universities be teaching to prepare students for the world ahead?

New Zealand First education spokeswoman Tracey Martin was there. I think we disagree about a few things.

The TEU’s question was a tough one. Forecasting future skill demands accurately enough to rejig university offerings requires crystal ballgazing abilities that would surely make anyone rich.

So I took the question from a different tack: it’s impossible to know how many economists, engineers or entertainers will be needed a few decades from now.

Instead, public funding should focus on strengthening broad-based preparation for tertiary study at secondary school – and generalist skills.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment produces occupational outlooks showing salaries and likelihood of employment in different professions. But this is of little use to a student weighing up options at NCEA Level 2. More useful at this stage would be personalised guidebooks, showing how other students have tried and how it panned out.

The government’s Integrated Data Infrastructure has all the data needed to do this. The system has comprehensive information on each person who completed NCEA since about 2005: what courses they took, their grades, what they studied at university or polytech, and what kind of employment followed.

Each student at NCEA Level 1 could receive a report detailing how different pathways turned out for students who are a lot like them.

Plenty of choices

This would enable better informed choices about which courses to take at NCEA and whether university, polytech or apprenticeships make most sense. But back to Mrs Martin.

She raised concerns from the floor about the use of big data. And there are plenty of legitimate concerns. It isn’t hard to imagine the government blocking access to tertiary study for someone with a statistically low chance of success – and the model being wrong.

Last weekend, Mrs Martin announced NZ First’s Up Front Investment Tertiary Policy. Her speech did a great job in diagnosing some of the problems. Too many students think the only route to success is a big loan and a diploma. Too many of them fail to complete their studies and wind up worse off because of it.

Mrs Martin also reported on the surprisingly high number of students who go on to take a second degree after finding the first degree did not lead to employment.

It is hard to disagree with much of her diagnosis. But I question the policy solutions.

NZ First’s scheme generated a lot of headlines for its tuition rebate system. But there’s more to it than that.

Let’s start with the good stuff.

NZ First proposes better careers advice in the schools. I think that is best done with the kind of data-centric approach I have proposed. NZ First looks to be proposing a shift toward strengthening vocational training; that too could also be worthwhile – though it could be better achieved by getting the prices right.

Other parts are more worrying. The tuition rebate system, if I am reading it correctly, is not that far from central planning of labour markets. The government, in coordination with the Tertiary Education Commission and Industry Training Organisations, would define how many places in each profession are needed, and fully fund those places.

Government guesses

Students would receive a universal allowance and every year of study would come with the expectation that they would have to work a year in New Zealand to pay off their “skill debt.”

Every time a Kiwi graduate went abroad, the lead industry group involved would have to find a comparable foreign person to take that graduate’s place, “for the time that our citizen is out of the country.”

I don’t know who would be willing to move their family to New Zealand on a “Until Murray moves back” visa.

But let’s leave that technical difficulty to one side.

The scheme requires that the government know how many people are needed in each profession and assumes that the government can and should manage the numbers to hit the targets.

The government makes some guesses about which professions are in short supply. That’s where the immigration skills-shortage list comes from. But thinking those figures can be pinned down well enough to require a like-for-like replacement whenever somebody leaves is, well, breathtaking.

I have a difficult time squaring scepticism about the Integrated Data Infrastructure, on the one hand, with optimism about the government’s ability to forecast precisely how many people are needed in each profession. And I am at least as sceptical that increasing the government’s share of the costs of tertiary education from 82% to 100% would only cost a few hundred million dollars.

Prices – or tuition charges – play some role in rationing demand for tertiary classroom seats. Students take on debt to cover living expenses and tuition charges during study, then pay it back based on their incomes post-study.

The income-contingent part means that, if a student winds up never entering the workforce or never earning very much, the loan can last a long time but will not impose that great a burden – at least as compared to schemes abroad.

When you take away prices, something else has to ration demand. In NZ First’s model, it looks like central planning of labour markets.

One of the big lessons of the 1980s, both here and abroad, was that doesn’t really work out too well.

The problems Mrs Martin identifies are important. But these solutions will not make things better. The crystal balls her plan requires do not exist.