Sir Peter Gluckman: former Chief Science Advisor on why university entrance requirements need to change

The Government's decided against making university entrance harder in its tertiary education shake-up. 

Universities Minister Shane Reti recently announced a package of initiatives to modernise the sector.

Reti's refresh only accepts 23 of 63 recommendations made by the University Advisory Group.

The group's leader, Sir Peter Gluckman, says they recommended changing up entry requirements, as it would ensure quality. 

"We're trying to make sure that we don't see degree inflation - and actually have degrees that maintain New Zealand's high quality in standards globally."

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The government's rejected recommendations for a more elite university system.
This is a report from the University Advisory Group. It
recommended making entry requirements harder and limiting which institutions can
award masters or doctorate degrees. But the government has said
no to all of this, and only sixty three or
only twenty three of the sixty three recommendations have actually
been accepted. Chair of that advisory group that wrote the

(00:22):
report was Sir Peter Gluckman, who's with us now, Peter, Hello,
hither Okay, why would we make the entry requirements harder?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, I think we need to be clear that across
the Western world over the last forty years, we've massively
increased the number of students and to university when many
of them need to be at a good polytechnic so
they can move on to careers. What we need to
do is make sure that universities produce graduates of the

(00:50):
quality for jobs that need university graduates.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
So you basically have universities just for the really smart kids.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
No, not necessarily, I think, and it's not one of
the major The primary recommendations in our report always saying
is we want to make sure that we maintain standards.
We need to make sure on the one hand we
have high quality entry and we've had problems with our
with our secondary school education as you know. And on
the other hand, we need to promote equity. So there's

(01:20):
a fine balance to achieve.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Okay, and so basically the same idea behind limiting the
masters and doctorate degrees.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Well, universities have a particular environment. That's why they created
They have a different funding base. They used to create
a complete environment for training people to use it with
research degrees. Polytechnics don't have that structure. They're not designed
to do that. There are parts of Polynechnicus and one

(01:49):
Nunger that do. And so we again were trying to
make sure that we don't see degree inflation and that
we actually have degrees that maintain news on high quality
and standards globally.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Are we not fighting I mean, aren't we fighting a
losing battle globally because globally the bachelor's has just become
a bit of a nothing, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, that's the point. We want our universities to be
of high quality, to produce high quality graduates. Yes, that
contribute to society.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
No, I know what you're saying. What I'm saying is.
What I'm saying is the thing that we're experiencing in
New Zealand is being experienced by the entire world. So
could we actually what's the value in holding the line?
Can we hold the line? Do we become elite if
we do?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
No, it's not about elitism. It's about making sure that
our young people have degrees and qualifications that fit them
for the world in the future. And we're seeing an
increasing number of the world is changing in terms of
educational post tertiary education. We're seeing more use of short qualifications,
more use of practical qualifications. We also need people who

(02:58):
are trained in the humanities, the social sciences and the
creative arts as well. We need to get the balance
right and we haven't had And this was the whole
point of why the strap the way the panel was
cool was created in the first place. We haven't had
a strategic look at the university system for over thirty

(03:19):
or forty years. We've paid a lot of time things
about the polytechniques. Both this administration and the last government
have put a lot of effort into that, but the universities,
which spend a large amount of unit of the government's
money and the core assets of the country needed to
be looked at from the point of view what do
we want to get from them? Peter?

Speaker 1 (03:41):
On another subject altogether, do you have a view on
the Paris Agreement?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
I have a view on climate change that we must
do our best well that community.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
It's not the question. That's not the question at all.
With respect, Jeez, you didn't come on here to be grilled.
The question is not do we have a The question
is do you have a view on the Paris Agreement
as the mechanism to fight climate change?

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Well, it's clearly in trouble. The multilateral system is clearly
in trouble. But the scientific community would say at the
moment it's the nearest thing we have to collective agreement
to make some progress, and in the absence of everything else,
it will only make it worse if we all fall
away from it.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Well, this is probably true as well, Peter. Thank you.
I always appreciate your expertise in and your giant brain.
That's sir. Peter Luckman, chair of the Advisory Group, wrote
report on the universities. For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive,
listen live to News Talks. It'd be from four pm weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio