Stenz/Projects/Stenz Advocacy and liaison/Submission
Sustainability in Tertiary Education in New Zealand
Equipping every graduate to make a difference.
Contents
Ministry Education Call for Submissions
http://www.minedu.govt.nz/theMinistry/Consultation/TertiaryEducationStrategyDraft/Overview.aspx
The Government sees the tertiary education system as a key national asset, which enriches New Zealanders’ lives, increases their employment opportunities and helps to build a productive skills base to drive economic growth.
The draft Tertiary Education Strategy 2010-15 sets out the Government’s expectations and priorities for New Zealand’s tertiary education system. The final document will guide the Tertiary Education Commission’s investment decisions and act as a reference point for the Government’s policy-making and relationships with the sector.
You are encouraged to provide feedback to the Ministry of Education by 6 November 2009. You can do so by email to tertiary.strategy@minedu.govt.nz [no spam].
In particular, you may wish to consider the following questions:
* Will the proposed approach to targeting, improving system performance, and supporting high quality research, help realise the Government’s 3-5 year priorities? * Do the Government’s expectations of providers and industry training organisations accurately and fully reflect the contribution these sub-sectors and the sector as a whole, can make to realising this strategy? * Will the early indicators of progress provide an accurate indication as to whether or not the system is making progress towards Government’s goals for tertiary education?
Who
STENZ itself
Institutional submissions
Individuals
Business groups
Ideas for submission
Key message: Applaud the inclusion of sustainability in the vision (that might be a surprise to them) but then argue that it must be explicit in the directives.
Vision
Opening line of TES:
High quality tertiary education is central to helping New Zealand achieve its economic, social and environmental goals, and meeting the development aspirations of Māori and Pasifika peoples.
But then hard to see in structural policies drivers (the government's 3-5 year priorities?)
The Government has identified six main structural policy drivers that will improve our economic performance and support more sustainable growth in future. These are improving the regulatory environment for business, lifting the performance of the public sector, supporting innovation and business, ensuring New Zealand has the skills it needs, improving infrastructure, and making the tax system as fair and efficient as possible.
Not clear where sustainability would fit in these six. One could argue that literacy is a generic term (including sustainability), but I think that’s grasping at straws.
The tertiary system will play a key role in the skills driver, which is focused on improving literacy and numeracy, youth achievement…
But we can argue that it is the future of NZ business:
It (tertiary education) will also play an important part in supporting the evolution and growth of industries through the innovation and business support driver.
The “Vision for tertiary education” does not explicitly mention sustainability, but could it could be interpreted to do so:
Access to high-quality tertiary education enriches people’s lives, increases their employment opportunities and helps to build a productive skills base to drive economic growth. Government wants relevant and efficient tertiary education provision that meets the needs of students, the labour market and the economy.
So too the Over-arching education vision (1.1). Successful citizens, world leading, security and opportunity are all concepts conducive to sustainability:
Government’s vision is for a world-leading education system that equips all New Zealanders with the knowledge, skills and values to be successful citizens in the 21st century.
A world-leading education system is an important first step towards a productive and growing economy that delivers greater prosperity, security and opportunity for all New Zealanders.
But we can argue that it is the future of NZ business: It will also play an important part in supporting the evolution and growth of industries through the innovation and business support driver.
The Tertiary education system is expected to: • provide New Zealanders of all backgrounds with opportunities to gain world-class skills and knowledge • raise the skills and knowledge of the current and future workforce to meet labour market demand and social needs • produce high quality research to build on New Zealand’s knowledge base, respond to the needs of the economy and address environmental and social challenges • enable Māori to achieve tertiary education success as Māori.
Sam draft
Feel very very free to mess about with this!
Key messages:
1. Applaud the inclusion of sustainability in the vision, but that it must take an integrated approach to an integrated socio-ecological system
2. Education for Sustainability must be explicit in the directives and mechanisms
3. Polytechnics must be supported in the delivery of applied degrees.
Justification
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the Tertiary Education Strategy.
The opening line of TES describes the role of tertiary education
High quality tertiary education is central to helping New Zealand achieve its economic, social and environmental goals, and meeting the development aspirations of Māori and Pasifika peoples.
The “Vision for tertiary education” does not explicitly mention sustainability, but it could be interpreted to do so:
Access to high-quality tertiary education enriches people’s lives, increases their employment opportunities and helps to build a productive skills base to drive economic growth. Government wants relevant and efficient tertiary education provision that meets the needs of students, the labour market and the economy.
So too the Over-arching education vision (1.1). Successful citizens, world leading, security and opportunity are all concepts conducive to sustainability:
Government’s vision is for a world-leading education system that equips all New Zealanders with the knowledge, skills and values to be successful citizens in the 21st century.
A world-leading education system is an important first step towards a productive and growing economy that delivers greater prosperity, security and opportunity for all New Zealanders.
An integration of the “economic, social and environmental goals” can be considered a in a sustainable future. Unfortunately, from then on, these integrated goals are split apart and considered separately, with an almost singular focus on the economic. This is contrary to a robust consideration of an integrated socio-economic system and will not lead to successful global citizens.
The strategy rightly points out the impact of education, it is the biggest lever we have for transforming NZ to a more prosperous society in the long term. I would like to see the use of this lever go beyond a focus on productivity for personal and societal benefit.
The tertiary education system needs to prepare learners who are capable of meeting future global challenges/changes. I suggest a focus on the sustainable practitioner would reflect goals already included in the draft TES but it needs to be made explicit. The expectation for research: “research…create and share new knowledge that contributes to New Zealand’s economic and social development, and environmental management”.
should be complemented by similar statements for teaching and learning:
Produce graduates who will think and act as sustainable practitioners for the benefit of New Zealand’s integrated economic and social development, and environmental management system.
(note perhaps this should be explicit and say strong sustainability - but I'm trying to use their words back at them).
While research is clearly important, the far bigger levers we have are the skills, values and behaviours of our graduates. This will ensure graduates have the capability to embed sustainability principles. values and practices in their lifestyle and profession.
The prosperous future of New Zealand relies on people from every discipline, hence it is important that we move to an “every graduate” approach to sustainability. This means that every student should be able to see through a sustainable lens.
As a society we have to learn to live in a complex world of interdependent systems with high uncertainties and multiple legitimate interests. These complex and evolving systems require a new way of thinking about risk, uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance. They require that we can think simultaneously of drivers and impacts of our actions across scales and barriers of space, time, culture, species and disciplinary boundaries. This means our graduates need skills in:
- Systems thinking
- An understanding of the connected nature of our socio-ecological system
- Critical and creative thinking
- Ability to act as change agent
- Understanding of ethics
- Sense of participation and action
Sustainability should not be seen as an extra subject and should not be confused with green, or with education about the environment. Instead it provides a context for learning within and about the student’s discipline. I believe a focus on sustainability will result in improved completion rates as it provides a hook to link academic subjects to the real world. This relevance will improve the work-ready nature of graduates. I applaud moves to promote collaborative work and direct relevance to industry and suggest Education for Sustainability as a proven powerful vehicle for achieving this.
Recommendations
3.1 Add education for Sustainability as an expectation for all graduates:
Sustainability is an explicit goal of research. Sustainability should also be explicit in teaching (rather than only implicit in “meet labour market demands”, and “world-class skills and knowledge”) and to complement the existing focus on productivity.
Produce graduates who will think and act as sustainable practitioners for the benefit of New Zealand’s integrated economic and social development, and environmental management system.
3.2 Add sustainable practice as a core capability
Acting as a sustainable practitioner is core capability, much like literacy and numeracy (indeed “Eco-literacy” is an often used short hand) and with similar productivity benefits.
• continuing to assist adult learners to gain the literacy, language, numeracy, information literacy and ecoliteracy skills for higher level study or skilled employment
3.3 Promote interdisciplinary study and research
With a discipline-based panel structure, the Performance-Based Research Fund is not good at supporting interdisciplinary research such as sustainability.
Add an action plan (to “We will look at whether the Performance-Based Research Fund is working well for all parts of the sector”) to look at how PBRF could better support interdisciplinary initiatives.
