Each year, more than a quarter of New Zealand’s school leavers enrol at university. But around one in five new university students leave within their first year of study, without completing a degree. Many accumulate substantial student loan debts during that time.
University is the right choice for many young people. For some, though, enrolling at university is less of a conscious choice and more of a default option. Their parents may see it as the best path to a good life. Perhaps most of their friends are going. So, having gained University Entrance (UE) in the final year of school, many school leavers simply wander into university without any clear idea of why.
Other options are available. New Zealand has a skills shortage in many trades and industries. Many of these occupations pay well. For example, heavy-diesel mechanics and public service policy analysts earn similar salaries.
Apprentices are paid a modest wage while they undertake their qualifications, which most complete with little or no debt. Meanwhile, university graduates typically have debts running into the tens of thousands and, depending on the kind of degree, some have relatively weak job prospects.
So why is university the default option for so many school leavers?
Historically, UE has provided the organising logic for the school curriculum. School subjects are largely derived from university disciplines, and teachers’ expertise reflects that. It is no surprise that university is the default option when that is what most subjects are based on, and the kind of tertiary study with which teachers are most familiar.
Now there is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change the game. The school qualification set to replace NCEA will include industry-led subjects. For the first time, vocational education subjects will have formal curricula. It could be the first step towards setting industry training on an equal status with university study.
As welcome as this is, both the development of the subjects and their implementation will face challenges. My new report for The New Zealand Initiative, Working Knowledge, lays out ideas for making the most of this opportunity.
The new Industry Skills Boards (ISBs), which set standards for industry qualifications at tertiary level, will write the curricula. That is a sound move from the perspective of ensuring that industry-led subjects are relevant to industry. There are two caveats, however.
ISBs will be knowledgeable about industry needs but less so about secondary schools and students. They will need to consult to ensure that the subjects are both appropriate for secondary students’ stage of cognitive development and manageable for schools.
A few vocational areas already have strong subject associations. They should be invited to contribute to writing the industry-led subjects in those areas. Some secondary schools – like Ashburton College, Manurewa College and Mount Aspiring College already have strong vocational programmes. Ashburton College, for example, runs a building and construction programme in which students are constructing an entire house under the supervision of a Master Builder. The principals of these schools know what it takes. They should be asked to review curriculum drafts.
Even with the best possible curricula, getting serious uptake of industry-led subjects will be challenging. Schools like Ashburton, Manurewa and Mount Aspiring are in a minority. Most schools are just not set up to run industry-led subjects at scale.
The key to success is resourcing. Industry-led subjects will need additional funding, and that funding must be spent wisely. There are existing programmes like Trades Academies, under which schools partner with tertiary institutions, and Gateway, which funds schools to arrange structured employment-based learning opportunities.
These are worthy initiatives, but they are capped, meaning that schools must apply for limited numbers of places. Until students can enrol in infrastructure engineering as straightforwardly as they can in history, industry-related learning will stay on the back foot relative to university-oriented learning.
Schools should receive top-up funding for every enrolment in an industry-led subject. They could spend that money on hiring teachers for those subjects, on partnering with tertiary institutions and employers, or on a combination of those things.
Bringing this about would cost more than the country can afford in new money. Instead, the funding would have to be redirected from elsewhere. A good place to find that money would be the university component of the fees-free year of study. That scheme, implemented by the Ardern government for the first year of study, and redirected to the final year by the Luxon government, entitles all young New Zealanders to one year of fully taxpayer-funded tertiary study.
The fees-free programme largely amounts to middle-class welfare. It has completely failed in its objective to lift university enrolments for young people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.
It is time to recycle that funding into something that could truly benefit our young people and the country they will inherit.
To read the article on the NZ Herald website, click here.