Mike Grimshaw: Associate Professor of Sociology at Canterbury University on number of tertiary students who are "functionally illiterate" at crisis level

A university lecturer has fired shots at the education system, claiming the number of tertiary students who are “functionally illiterate” is at crisis level.

Associate Professor of Sociology at Canterbury University Mike Grimshaw believes New Zealand is under-educating and over-qualifying.

He tells Heather du Plessis-Allanit’s a wider societal issue of how we value education, fund it and what we want from the system.

New Zealand pumps out around 45,000 tertiary graduates a year. Grimshaw says there is no increase in the societal, cultural and economic outcomes that degrees are said to provide.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now to something else altogether. A university lecturer has fired
shots at the education system, claiming the number of tertiary
students who are functionally illiterate is at a crisis level.
As Sociate professor of Sociology at Canterbury University, Mike Grimshaw
believes that we're under educating and overqualifying and universities need
to return to being institutions for the elite rather than

(00:20):
degree factories and mics with us.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Now, hey, mikey, how are you very well?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Thank you? Why do we have these people turning up,
presumably turning up at university being functionally illiterate? Why is
this happening?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I think it's a wider societal issue. It's a question
about how we value education. It's what's happening in NZEA,
It's the long effect of COVID, It's social media, and
it's also that push that we should have so many
people coming to university to gain a degree and yet
how many degree jobs are we actually creating at the
end of the education process. But also once they are

(00:55):
coming in, they are often underachieving for a whole host
of reasons, part because of what they have left school with,
partly because of what is happening within the university system,
but also also many of them are not really sure
why they're here, and so it's a wider societal issue.
I called it out because there's a lot of discussion

(01:16):
about this in the university, but I sort of feel
I'm like the boy who called out the imprison new
clothes because everyone knows this is happening, but nobody really
wants to talk. And this is unfortunately the power of LinkedIn.
I have put a LinkedIn post when gang Busters have
got picked up. It's out there, someday, it's all over
the media. There's been a deafening silence from within the

(01:37):
university itself, which is quite understandable because no one really
wants to have it mentioned that we are one end
of a problem. I mean, we are seeing the ones
who have succeeded in NCEA, so that makes us wonder
what is actually happening for those who haven't succeeded, And
that's a wider societal issue that there is all the

(01:58):
way back, I would say, down to primary school funding
of education and what we want in our education system
and how we view it as a society.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Mike, how many graduates are we pumping out every year.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
I think from the University of New Zealand it's somewhere
around about forty five thou forty to forty thousand to
forty five thousand graduates a year.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
How many of those do you believe are too many?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, we're pumping out forty to forty five thousand, ninety
five percent of them are undergraduate degrees. Are we creating
forty to four Are we creating that many jobs for
graduates in our society? And I would say the evidence
would seem to be that we are not. And if
we are, are we seeing the flow throughs in our

(02:40):
economy and our society and productivity, et cetera. And we're
not seeing it there?

Speaker 1 (02:44):
So what do we do? I mean, Mike, the problem
is nowadays you need degrees for things that you did
for jobs that you didn't need degrees for few years ago. Right,
So my job graduated, became a journalist, you had you
basically had to have a degree, if not a post
grad for it. And if you graduated in the sixty
or if you left school in the sixties to become
a journalist, you didn't. So can we get around the

(03:07):
fact that that is an expectation from employers.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Now, well, I think it goes even further back. I
mean really, now, a three year degree will get you
the sort of job in many ways and a lot
of areas that university entrants would get you thirty forty years, That's.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
What I'm saying. So, how many jobs do you reckon
we actually don't need degrees for, but our employers are
demanding it.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
No, I'd say, well, it depends on the areas and
depends on what we want a degree for. Is a
degree just about education for a job? Will? We often
say that a degree is for a whole host of
other issues regarding civic responsibility, cultural outcomes, wider society or outcomes.
And so then the question is have we seen a
increase in those societal, cultural economic outcomes that we say

(03:53):
a degree provides given the exponential increase in those who
are going to university now, and again I would say
we're not. So that that raises a big question as
to well, what is what are we doing in the university,
but also what are we doing in our education system
before university? But also what are employers doing? Why do
they require a degree for jobs that often don't require

(04:14):
a degree.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
So what's the downside of someone like me having a degree,
having having gone and spent three or four years at university.
What's the downside?

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Well, there's no downside if you have come out of
that degree education with increased literacy, with increased thinking ability,
critical thinking, if you have expanded your cultural and social
and educational horizons. I'd say it's also been useful if
you've turned up to lectures. One of our big problems
is that we can now you can now not you

(04:46):
don't have to turn up to lectures, that lectures are recorded. Yeah, so,
and we have to make material available. And so I
think this we are create My colleague Joe Gilbert's written
about this as well, we're creating a society. The expectation
is that you don't have to turn up, you don't
have to do ex or y. I've had colleagues who
have said students are turning up saying do we have

(05:07):
to read a whole book? Lost?

Speaker 1 (05:10):
It's lost? The essence of what a university or what
university is about, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, we have and we're not really sure what education
is about or what or what education is for. We're
not sure what a university is for, and everyone's going
quiet because the Gluckman Review is on, and everyone's worried
about what the Gluckman Review is going to say about
the future of universities. And so we know internationally there
are issues. The same issues are occurring in the USA,

(05:35):
the same issues occurring in Australia. Across in Britain, we're
not really sure what the point of education from primary
school onwards is and that's a societal question and we
are seeing one end of it within the universities, but
we are seeing the ongoing issues of this right through
the school system. I think in Western culture, I.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Think you're onto something here, Mike, thank you very much
for talking us, sir as Mike Grimshaw, Associate Professor of Sociology,
Canterbury University. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen
live to news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays,
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