Funding blow to humanities: uni
A changed approach to tertiary education funding in this year's Budget has left the University of Otago scrambling to work out what it means.
Universities Minister Dr Shane Reti announced yesterday a boost to high demand Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), along with initial teacher education and other priority health workforce areas.
This is on top of the broader 3% increase in tuition subsidies, meaning, in total, Stem and other higher priority subjects will attract a 4.75% tuition cost subsidy increase at degree level and above.
Budget 2025 also proposes universities would be able to implement an annual maximum fee rise of 6% for next year, similar to this year's increase in fees.
"The proposed maximum rate reflects that fees have lagged behind inflation in recent years, making it harder for providers to maintain course quality," Dr Reti said.
"Together, the targeted funding rate increases and the proposed fee increase will support tertiary education and training providers to sustain the quality of provision and further invest in priority areas."
Otago University vice-chancellor Grant Robertson said this was a disappointing Budget for the tertiary sector.
"Funding for the sector has gone down overall, and there are not resources to keep up with increasing costs that universities face."
The removal of the 4% funding uplift put in place in 2023 was also disappointing.
"That is somewhat made up for with funding rate increases for some areas [such as science and medicine] which means, on our initial calculations, Otago claws back much of the lost top-up funding at an overall university level.
"However, funding for commerce and humanities decreases.
"This undermines our ability to work collaboratively across disciplines to help solve the big challenges facing our world."
Mr Robertson said the university needed to continue to find savings and build revenue opportunities across the university to meet the financial expectations set by the government.
"This is important to our strategy to ensure a sustainable future for the university."
Green MP Francisco Hernandez said this year's Budget made about $162million in "raw" cuts across the entire tertiary sector in terms of total appropriations, which could be significantly more once inflation was factored into proceedings.
"So, overall it's quite a big cut to the tertiary sector and obviously that's going to be quite bad for Dunedin."
Tertiary Education Union co-president Craig Marshall, of Otago University, said the government's approach illustrated "a failure to understand what a proper education system is".
"For funding on Stem to almost match inflation is beneficial, but most universities would be looking at ways of ensuring that their humanities programmes remain viable.
"If you don't know the value of what people want and how they intend to use it, then the thing has little value.
"Humanities tell us about the way people think, which is something we also need to know."
Otago University Students' Association president Liam White said he was surprised about the announcement of the proposed 6% increase in university fees.
"No-one likes to see increases, but to be honest, I was expecting it to be more — it does mean that universities will have to find more of the savings.
"I mean, it really makes me quite nervous for the future of the university.
"I think it could be quite grim for humanities."
matthew.littlewood@odt.co.nz
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But he said the government's decision to favour STEM subjects over humanities was mistaken. "It's an unfortunate message. There seems to be a belief that somehow universities, if they're given more funding for science, technology, engineering, maths-type subjects, can persuade students to drop doing the liberal arts or social sciences and shift across. "The reality is that's just not the case," he said. All fields of university study contributed to the skilled workforce the government said it wanted, he said. Universities minister Shane Reti told RNZ that was correct, but STEM subjects were more closely linked to productivity. "The message we're sending is that we're particularly investing and funding those courses that clearly have a pathway to productivity and economic gain and these are generally the science and the STEM subjects." Enrolments in those subjects had been increasing and the funding decision should encourage universities to increase the breadth and depth of their STEM programmes, Reti said, and universities were not sliding toward failure. "Across the sector, there are some who are doing well and some who are struggling and indeed have been struggling for some period of time and and are receiving extra attention support and monitoring from TEC (the Tertiary Education Commission). "But if we look at the big picture, there's a significant increase in student numbers this year... It's quite a change in trend from over the previous few years where student numbers have been falling away." The government had allocated $111m over the next two years to cover growing university enrolments, he said. He confirmed that the government had allocated enough funding to cover 99% of expected enrolments next year and the commission would be expected to cover the remainder from its reserves. Changing shares of the enrolment pie Ministry of Education Ministry show that sciences have lost ground against other subjects in terms of enrolments in Bachelors degrees in the past 10 years. Considered by predominant field of study, the percentage of students enrolled in the "natural and physical sciences" dropped from 14 to 13% between 2024 and 2015. Health enrolments rose from 17 to 20 percent while education, management and commerce, and the creative arts all dropped slightly. Predominant field of study for 120,995 domestic students enrolled in Bachelors degree programmes in 2024 and 127,705 in 2015. Subject in 2015 / in 2024 Sciences 14% / 13% IT 6% / 7% Engineering 3% / 3% Arch and building 2% / 3% Ag, environment 2% / 2% Health 17% / 20% Education 8%/ 7% Management, commerce 20% /18% Society and culture 33% / 33% Creative arts 11% / 10%
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"You'll just see small losses here and there and everywhere else and at the end of it all it's very difficult to predict what that leads to but perhaps the loss of a university." Marshall said the latest decisions meant universities would struggle to offer some humanities courses and students would start to vote with their feet. "What we're starting to see is students instead of coming to universities in New Zealand from school, they'll go to universities overseas. They see that as a better outcome," he said. "Increasingly, students opt now for postgrad graduate training outside of New Zealand, rather than in New Zealand. Some of the universities will be weakened, some may be fatally weakened." Marshall agreed the government was unlikely to let a university to go under, but one or more could lose the ability to provide the research-informed teaching that fostered critical thought - in which case it would cease to be a university in all but name. Universities New Zealand chief executive Chris Whelan said the long-term trend for university funding was poor, but none of the eight institutions was close to failing. "It's becoming challenging to basically retain our position internationally. We shouldn't care about things like international rankings, but the reality is they do send quite important signals to academic staff, to people that want to do research collaborations with New Zealand researchers and to international students," he said, referring to league tables in which New Zealand universities had been falling. "There is a tipping point where if funding got so low we were not able to maintain that quality, we would have a problem. But I don't think we're anywhere near that." However, Whelan said the net effect of the Budget was no increase to total university funding next year. He said that was about as good as the sector could have expected under the circumstances. But he said the government's decision to favour STEM subjects over humanities was mistaken. "It's an unfortunate message. There seems to be a belief that somehow universities, if they're given more funding for science, technology, engineering, maths-type subjects, can persuade students to drop doing the liberal arts or social sciences and shift across. The reality is that's just not the case," he said. Whelan said all fields of university study contributed to the skilled workforce the government said it wanted. Universities are not heading towards failure, the minister says. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone Universities minister Shane Reti told RNZ that was correct but STEM subjects were more closely linked to productivity. "The message we're sending is that we're particularly investing and funding those courses that clearly have a pathway to productivity and economic gain and these are generally the science and the STEM subjects," he said. Reti said enrolments in those subjects had been increasing and the funding decision should encourage universities to increase the breadth and depth of their STEM programmes. He said universities were not sliding toward failure. "Across the sector, there are some who are doing well and some who are struggling and indeed have been struggling for some period of time and and are receiving extra attention support and monitoring from TEC," he said. "But if we look at the big picture, there's a significant increase in student numbers this year... It's quite a change in trend from over the previous few years where student numbers have been falling away." Reti said the government had allocated $111m over the next two years to cover growing university enrolments. He confirmed that the government had allocated enough funding to cover 99 percent of expected enrolments next year and the Tertiary Education Commission would be expected to cover the remainder from its reserves. Education Ministry figures show the sciences have lost ground against other subjects in terms of enrolments in Bachelors degrees in the past 10 years. Considered by predominant field of study, the percentage of students enrolled in the "natural and physical sciences" dropped from 14 to 13 percent between 2024 and 2015. Health enrolments rose from 17 to 20 percent while education, management and commerce, and the creative arts all dropped slightly. Predominant field of study for 120,995 domestic students enrolled in Bachelors degree programmes in 2024 and 127,705 in 2015. Subject 2015 2024 Sciences 14 percent 13 percent IT 6 percent 7 percent Engineering 3 percent 3 percent Arch and building 2 percent 3 percent Ag, envmnt 2 percent 2 percent Health 17 percent 20 percent Education 8 percent 7 percent Mngmnt, commerce 20 percent 18 percent Society and culture 33 percent 33 percent Creative arts 11 percent 10 percent
