History of the University in New Zealand: Influences from Afar

New Zealand’s higher education system has a comparatively short history. While the roots of modern universities were being established in Europe around the beginning of the twelfth century (Boyd and King 1975), New Zealand had yet to be settled, by anyone. Māori arrived in the thirteenth century, and it was more than half a century later that European settlement began in earnest. Back in England and Scotland, where many of New Zealand’s early settlers came from, universities had been on a roller coaster ride of rising popularity to waning enrolments.

Glenys Patterson, in her excellent book on the history of the university, argues that “most of the major scientific and technological discoveries and the new philosophical, social and political ideologies, were spawned beyond the walls of the university” (1997, p. 128). Eventually, however, new universities in England in the 1800s began to show signs of innovation and reform, encouraging Oxford and Cambridge to acknowledge competition, and also to admit non-Anglican students. In 1828, the University of London opened as a secular university college, aiming “to provide an education in the arts and sciences for the ‘youth of our middling rich people’” (Lawson and Silver 1973, p. 257) that is “all between mechanics and the enormously rich” (Thomas Campbell, cited in Patterson 1997, p. 163).

Rivalry for the University College of London came in the form of the Anglican King’s College in 1831, until the two colleges were incorporated under the examining body of the University of London in 1836, establishing a model for the eventual development of the University of New Zealand and its four affiliated teaching colleges later in the century. The University of London paved the way for the establishment of more ‘redbrick’ civic universities (in contrast to the ancient stone of Oxford and Cambridge) in England, and university education became more accessible as a result. The new institutions relaxed entrance requirements as well as curricula, opening their doors to lower classes, the less-educated, and, eventually, to women.

The Scottish university system made the most significant strides towards “education-for-all” in the nineteenth century and later strongly influenced the New Zealand situation. Scotland (its first university, St Andrews, having been founded in 1411) drew its university students from all classes – John Macmillan Brown, first Professor of English at Canterbury College in New Zealand, for example, was the son of an Ayrshire shipmaster, and he supported himself through the University of Edinburgh and later Glasgow by giving private tuition (Hankin 1993, p. 58). As Patterson notes, in Scotland, “there was no entrance examination, fees were low and costs were minimal…[and] the university terms were arranged to fit around the agricultural year” (1997, p. 170). Furthermore, curricula in the Scottish universities were quick to change in line with their increasingly diverse student populations. While a Scottish university education did not offer as much freedom as a German one, where the concepts of lernfreiheit (freedom of choice and movement for the student) and lehrfreiheit (freedom of teaching expression) dominated, it was not as rigid as an Oxbridge one, where the emphasis still lay on turning out ‘cultivated’ men, steeped in Classical learning. It was from the Scottish atmosphere of egalitarianism and innovation that many of New Zealand’s early professors came.

The Needs of a New Colony

In New Zealand, the purposes of a university education differed quite significantly from those in Britain. The issue of higher education for the new settlers was raised by the Otago Association in Scotland as early as 8 years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, and 2 years later by the English Canterbury Association, but not until 1854 did university education warrant public discussion and attention in New Zealand. Prior to that, many Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) were arguably more educated than some recent settlers. Joanna Kidman (1999) explains that Māori – particularly those of chief or noble descent (rangatira) – engaged in advanced learning of esoteric and theoretical knowledge at various educational institutions (some in permanently established tribal buildings and others in various physical settings). This learning also included:

religious and ceremonial rites concerning the well being, enlightenment, history, and geneology of the tribe as well as the secret arts of magic, healing, and science. There were also schools of a more vocational nature which were open to all members of the tribe which taught skills such as boat building, weapon making and carving. (Kidman 1999, p. 77)

“Most Māori,” Kidman argues, thus “had more formal education than the majority of the new settlers” (1999, p. 78) in the mid-1800s. It was to these perceived deficiencies in the education of the new settlers that attention turned in the new colony.

As W.P. Morrell writes in his history of the University of Otago, “the Rector of the ‘High School’, who arrived in October 1856, found little use for his qualifications in classics and mathematics and had to teach elementary subjects” (1969, p. 2). The Rector, Reverend F. C. Simmons, thought a system whereby scholarships enabled New Zealand students to attend universities in Great Britain would be more appropriate for a new and growing colony than the immediate establishment of a university. Many agreed with him. Judge Richmond “feared that all New Zealand could produce by way of a university was a ‘stunted tree’: far better to remain ‘a healthy branch’” (Sinclair 1983, p. 3). And, Lord Lyttleton, on an 1868 visit to Canterbury, “somewhat repelled by the raw colonial scene…renounced one of his old dreams in these words ‘…a young colony cannot have a university’” (Gardner 1973, p. 21).

Just a year later, however, the University of Otago was established by ordinance of the Otago Provincial Council, followed within 4 years by Canterbury University College. In the meantime, an Act of Parliament in September 1870 established the University of New Zealand to act as an examining body, along the lines of the University of London, with affiliated colleges in the provinces acting as teaching institutions. It would be a university “moulded to suit the state of society in the colony. We must strike out a line of our own. We must adapt the scheme of university education to the peculiar requirements of our own case. We cannot reproduce Oxford, Cambridge, or Edinburgh in New Zealand” (Veel, editor of the Christchurch Press in the 1870s, cited in Gardner 1973, pp. 34–35).

By the turn of the century, as the “Story of New Zealand Universities” tells, on Universities New Zealand’s website,Footnote 1 there were four colleges: Otago in Dunedin (1869), Canterbury College in Christchurch (1873), Auckland (1883), and Victoria University College in Wellington (1899). While Auckland and Victoria were determined to provide an accessible and utilitarian university education, along the lines of the University of London, the Oxbridge influence was strong in the south – at Canterbury, especially, where the requirement to wear a cap and gown and attend chapel twice a day, and the proximity of Christ’s College and the cathedral, stood as testimony to the Christchurch settlers’ attempts to replicate English traditions. But the resemblance was superficial. A more substantive influence came from the Scottish universities, where, Chris Worth reports, “supplying the deficiencies of secondary education…[was] part of normal Scottish practice” (Worth 1998, p. 212). As Gardner writes, one of the first requirements of the University of New Zealand was the “training of a generation of teachers who would have to turn their hands, particularly in the new secondary schools, to almost any subject demanded of them” (Gardner 1973, p. 96).

Education for All?

New Zealand’s universities were founded on egalitarian principles – offering open access, part-time opportunities, evening classes, and distance education so that many different types of student could participate – and New Zealand was the “first Commonwealth country to award a degree to a woman” (Kidman 1999, p. 8). Access to university for those who desired it, and those who may never even have considered it possible, was always a concern for New Zealand universities, as outlined by Governor Jervois in his opening address for the Auckland University College of the University of New Zealand in 1885:

No greater mistake can be made than to suppose that universities are intended only for people of private means and learned desire. The true function of a modern university I take to be, to give to all – men and women alike – who wish to avail themselves of it every facility for higher education in whatever branch they choose for themselves [cheers] (cited in Malcolm and Tarling 2007, p. 84).

Not all were as convinced of the necessity for higher education at a time when the new country needed to address issues of more practical concern. The general public – the majority of whom were lower-class British settlers – saw the University as “an unnecessary expense at a time when money was needed for many other things” (Kidman 1999, p. 79). One of the early professors opined in a Centennial lecture in 1940 that the university’s founding fathers might have paid more attention to the “problems of the new land: agriculture, mining, forestry” and predicted that, had there been more focus on local concerns and less on teaching the “traditional subjects” being taught back in England and Scotland, there would likely “have been a fully developed School of Polynesian Studies” (Professor Sir Thomas Hunter in 1940, cited in Kidman 1999, p. 83).

As it was, however, the early New Zealand settlers battled to imbue their new country with a sense of culture, a refinement of manners and attitude that would belie their rough existence. Applicants for the Chair of Classics, English, and History at Canterbury University College were warned, “the object of the College is to create a demand for culture, which does not exist at present in any perceptible degree” (Gardner 1973, p. 86). The curricula were thus strongly influenced by what was happening in British universities, and the University of New Zealand set rigid specifications to which the four colleges were expected to adhere. In the discipline of English, for example, to “introduce a new set book…required the agreement of the four professors of English, and the approval of the Senate, and the signature of the Governor General” (Thomson 1994, p. 13). These tight ties to “home” were further reinforced by the reality that, until the 1940s, most examination scripts were sent back to England for marking (Currie and Kedgley 1959, p. 5).

The 1940s saw a shift in several respects, however. Examination scripts were no longer sent on their long journey across the seas for marking, and, where the colleges had previously been thought of primarily as teaching institutions rather than centres for research (Gardner 1973; Sinclair 1983), academics began to call for a greater emphasis on research. In Christchurch in 1945, a pamphlet was produced, Research and the University, which pleaded for a dual role for the University as both a teaching and a research institution (University of New Zealand 1945). A year later, Dr. Beeby, the then Director of Education, included “a modest sum for university research ($20,000) in his departmental budget, and it was this grant which the University Research Committee was established to distribute” (Gould 1988, p. 150). Then, in 1948, a Grants Committee was set up by the Senate of the University of New Zealand, in recognition of the “desperate need for greater financial support for the country’s universities” (Gould 1988, p. 17) following a flood of returning ex-servicemen seeking university education. This Grants Committee served as the precursor to the University Grants Committee, established in 1961, which included funds for research and graduate study in its quinquennial grants.

New Zealand was at this time, according to some, “a nation ‘devoid of theory’” (British Liberal MP David Goldblatt on a visit in the middle of the twentieth century, cited in Brown 2005, p. 8) and there was an abiding sense of anti-intellectualism, where pragmatism and the Kiwi “do-it-yourself” (DIY) attitude was, and arguably still is, prided over thinking and reading (Jesson 1997, p. 12). Todd Bridgman, in an article on the academic role of “critic and conscience” explains this further:

The term public intellectuals rests uncomfortably with me…largely because of what is regarded as the anti-intellectualism of New Zealanders…Prevailing colonial attitudes are blamed for the suppression of Māori intellectual activity while puritanism and egalitarianism have…created a fear of difference. Another significant factor is New Zealand’s pioneer culture, which privileges Kiwi ingenuity and undervalues academic achievement (Bridgman 2007, p. 139).

Increasing Demand for Higher Education

Despite this apparent undervaluing of higher education, by the 1960s demand for university education in New Zealand was increasing. In 1962, the University of New Zealand was disestablished, the four university colleges became full universities in their own right, and two other universities were established 2 years later (the University of Waikato and Massey University). At the same time as the disestablishment of the University of New Zealand, the University Grants Committee (UGC) was “set up as a buffer body” (Savage 2000, p. 46) between the government and the universities. During the mid-twentieth century, universities maintained a considerable amount of autonomy from government intervention in their affairs. The UGC granted bulk funding to each university on a five-yearly basis that university councils made decisions about how to spend, and government (apart from having one or two appointees on each university’s council) largely let universities decide their own direction and course offerings. It had taken some time to gain this autonomy, however, as evidenced by a pamphlet written by three of the professors at Victoria University College in 1911, calling for the reform of university education in New Zealand and allowing more room for professorial staff in the governance of universities:

“A University’s task”, it was declared, “is to combine higher and professional instruction with the advancement of knowledge.” A university teacher “will be repelled unless he can make his personal influence and ideas felt in shaping the general policy of his University, and in serving the community not only as an investigator, but through his share in the administration of University education. This principle is recognised throughout the civilised world, but not in New Zealand…Research and teaching must co-exist…and teacher and pupils must be partners.” The state must not “meddle”: it must “supply the wherewithal and select the right men”. The University Senate and the college councils ought to include professors as well as lay persons, and there should be a conjoint professorial board, responsible for curriculum and examining. (Thomas Hunter, George William von Zedlitz, and Thomas Laby, 1911, cited in Malcolm and Tarling 2007, p. 88).

The UGC appeared to fulfil this mission sufficiently well for many years. The government provided funding to universities in the form of bulk grants that the university Councils (which included professors and lay people as Hunter and his colleagues had hoped) decided how to spend, and on what, through until the 1980s when major reforms occurred to the entire tertiary education sector.

Reforms in the 1980s and 1990s: Neoliberalism, Marketisation, and a New Education Act

In the mid-late 1980s, New Zealand underwent what has been described as “one of the most aggressive and extensive applications of neo-liberal market policies in the English-speaking world” (Robinson 2006, p. 42). Various commentators argue that this period of reform was one of the most ambitious attempts at “constructing the free market as a social institution to be implemented anywhere this century – and hailed by the World Bank, the Economist, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a model for the rest of the world to follow” (Shore and McLauchlan 2012, p. 269). The 1980s and early 1990s saw a period of reform to almost all areas of the public sector through the introduction of various acts of Parliament that demanded more accountability from state-funded institutions, such as universities and hospitals, and in many instances increased state regulatory control. For example, the State Sector Act of 1988 “brought academics under a similar employment relations system to the private sector” (Tipples and Krivokapic-Skoko 1997, p. 105) and “made the vice-chancellors of each university the employer rather than the university councils” (Robinson 2006, p. 39). Salary negotiations also became the responsibility of the Vice Chancellor as employer rather than being decided by the Higher Salaries Commission.

At the same time as the introduction of this “management culture” (Malcolm and Tarling 2007), the government also encouraged a competitive ethos in the university sector, leading to what many commentators have labelled the “marketisation” (Larner and Le Heron 2005) of higher education. Higher education became a commodity that could be sold and traded (Roberts 2009), with growing numbers of “customers” (students) able to choose their “product” (degree) from the eight “providers” (universities), or from “competitors” (polytechnics and private training establishments) who began to aggressively brand themselves and market their offerings beyond their local regions. As student numbers increased through the 1980s and 1990s, the expectation also grew that students should contribute towards the cost of their own education, with a university degree now seen as a private benefit – accruing better wages, opportunities, and standard of living for the individual – rather than as a public good (Curtis 2008; Roberts 2009).

Consequently, in 1991, the student bursary (where all students attending university were eligible to receive a weekly allowance to support their living costs) was abolished and replaced by a student loan scheme (with interest accumulating from the first drawdown). Students also had to start contributing towards the cost of their education, with the introduction of fees that averaged around $1250 for a full year of study in 1991, and increased every year on average around 13% (Healey and Gunby 2012, p. 35) through the 1990s.

The same Education Act (and associated amendments in 1990) that saw the introduction of student fees, the abolishment of the universal allowance, and the naming of Vice Chancellors as employers, also delineated the roles of all tertiary institutions. Encouragingly, universities were asked to accept a role as “critic and conscience of society”, and were provided legislative protection for autonomy and academic freedom (Boston 1997; Kelsey 2000; Robinson 2006).

However, the Education Act also wrought vast changes to the relationship between universities, the government, and individual academics. The UGC was abolished and replaced “by a direct system of accountability between each tertiary institution and the Ministry of Education through the system of charters, plans and objectives, and by more direct control over funding based on student numbers” (Olssen 2002, p. 79). Wilf Malcolm, formerly Vice Chancellor of Waikato University, and Professor of History, Nicholas Tarling, wrote in 1997 that the Hawke Report of 1988, which outlined many of the reforms that would be implemented in the tertiary sector was noted by many as being full of contradictions:

It advocated devolution, but gave the Ministry control; advocated simplicity, but abolished the UGC; advocated equity and efficiency, but ignored the current cheapness of the system; said research and teaching were interdependent, but funded them separately; advocated a policy-oriented Ministry, but gave it the task of approving charters and funding (Malcolm and Tarling 2007, p. 165).

Others have acknowledged that while the Act protected the academic freedom of institutions, it threatened to undermine the academic freedom of individual academics (Sullivan 1997), and the key support structures that enable academic freedom, such as collegial governance (Boston 1997; Robinson 2006). These concerns carried through into the new century, when even more neoliberal reforms found their way into New Zealand’s university sector.

Changes in the Early 2000s: The Tertiary Education Commission and the PBRF

A new Labour government, elected at the end of 1999, carried through several reforms that the National government had begun, as well as introducing many new initiatives. Some key changes focused on increasing participation in university education by students from low socio-economic groups, introducing fees maxima, making student loans interest-free while students were studying (Strathdee 2006), and imposing a fees freeze from 2001 to 2003. They also established Centres for Research Excellence to increase collaboration and cooperation between researchers and institutes (Opie 2004).

Following a series of four reports from the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission (2000, 2001a, b, c) in the early 2000s,Footnote 2 the twenty-first century also saw the introduction of the “Tertiary Education Strategy” (TES) approach. Through these strategies, the government lays out its expectations for the tertiary sector; universities (and other tertiary education institutions) must then align their plans and priorities with those of the TES. We have so far seen four Tertiary Education Strategies, and their themes and priorities are summarised in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1 Tertiary Education Strategies (TES) in New Zealand 2002–2019
Full size table

It is clear that all four Tertiary Education Strategies do not differ very much from each other, despite different governments; they are all concerned with aligning higher education more directly with the needs of the New Zealand economy and workforce. Such shifts in educational policy are also evident elsewhere in the world (Henkel 2005; Leišytė and Dee 2012). A good example is provided by Jongbloed et al., in their report on the funding of higher education in 33 different European countries. They note that that there is a prevailing policy belief that “universities in Europe should be freed from over-regulation and micro-management, while accepting in return fuller institutional accountability to their host societies for their results” (2010, p. 21).

Expectations of such accountability inevitably produce strategies that focus on economic outcomes, success rates, and business models, arguably at the expense of disinterested knowledge about the humanities, arts, and society (Opie 2004). This “New Public Management” (Barry et al. 2003; Henkel 2000; Leišytė and Dee 2012; Marginson and Considine 2000;) approach to the development of the tertiary strategies, many argue, puts neoliberal values of entrepreneurialism, competition and market forces, fiscal responsibility and accountability, managerialism, performance measurement, and productivity, ahead of the traditional academic values of collegiality, investigation of truth and critical inquiry, academic freedom, openness, and contribution to knowledge (Bansel and Davies 2010; Harland et al. 2010; Leišytė 2016; Levin and Aliyeva 2015; Olssen 2002; Roberts 1999; Tight 2014).

Critics of the neoliberal reforms to higher education in New Zealand in the last two decades identify the surveillance of institutions and individual academics as one of the most troubling aspects of the reforms. Funding for New Zealand universities is now dependent on institutions meeting the targets they set and on matching their priorities with those identified in the relevant TES, as laid out in the “System expectations and delivery” section of the document:

TEC [the Tertiary Education Commission] will use this strategy to set performance expectations for the sector, and to shape its investment in TEOs [Tertiary Education Organisations] in a way that reflects the strategy’s priorities, shifting funding over time to those TEOs that demonstrate they can make the best contribution to the outcomes sought by the Government (Ministry of Education 2014)

The introduction of performance-based research funding is also cited as evidence of this growing panoptic culture (Ashcroft and Nairn 2004; Roberts 2014). Funding for teaching and research was gradually separated (and, many argue, reduced) through the 2000s, first with the introduction of the Tertiary Education Strategies and then the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF), which reallocated funding for research to a competitive pool. Tertiary institutions now compete for research funding from a pool that represents around 11.4% (Wright et al. 2014) of all tertiary funding, or as the government argues, “20% of the government’s total research and development investment” each year (Joyce 2014, p. 3).

To win a share of this research money, institutions must submit individual evidence portfolios from all their researchers, which are assigned a quality score on the basis of research outputs and examples of peer esteem and contributions to the research environment. Alongside the individual portfolio scores (which are aggregated to give departmental and then institutional quality scores), institutions must also report their postgraduate completion rates and the amount of external research funding they have secured.

Many commentators, from New Zealand and abroad, have noted that, as a performance-based assessment scheme, New Zealand’s PBRF is fundamentally sound, more robust and less problematic than other systems elsewhere (Roberts 2013a; Wright et al. 2014). Indeed, the minister responsible for tertiary education in 2014 lauded it for supporting a significant increase in research performance and productivity in New Zealand (Joyce 2014). However, the PBRF has been widely criticised for concentrating unevenly on quantity and output over quality and process (Harland et al. 2010; Roberts 2013b) and many regard the PBRF as a managerial surveillance mechanism (Ashcroft 2007; Cupples and Pawson 2012; Curtis 2007; Shore 2010; Waitere et al. 2011) that risks alienating and exhausting academic staff. Chapter 4 provides more insights on the effects of the PBRF on early career academics.

Recent Happenings: Economic Outlooks and Grassroots Initiatives

The PBRF is just one among many higher education polices from successive New Zealand governments that focus on ensuring that money spent on higher education is well accounted for. Institutions are now also expected to report on student retention and completion rates, and run the risk of having to pay back government tuition funding if more than half of enrolled students fail a course/qualification.

Tellingly, the Minister responsible for tertiary education is now called the Minister of Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment. Until recently, this Minister also held the ministerial portfolios for Science and Innovation, and for Economic Development, emphasising an orientation that privileges economic benefits to New Zealand. In 2012, the then Minister announced a new scheme that would publish average incomes for each qualification so that students could make choices about their study based on earning potential. By early 2016, this scheme had become the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) “Occupation Outlook App”, where students can search for tertiary study options based on potential income, job prospects, and costs of the qualifications required for particular careers. Rather than encouraging young people to choose a course of study based on passion for, interest in, or love of learning, the government is steering them towards choices made on economic grounds: how much can you earn? what’s the likelihood you’ll get a job? and what will it cost you to get there? MBIE now regularly publishes a report that outlines the earning power of various qualifications, sending the message through such reports and with increased funding for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects that learning is best attached to some sort of economic or productive outcome. Further reinforcing this focus, in November 2015, the then Finance Minister, Bill English, and Tertiary Education Minister, Steven Joyce, asked the Productivity Commission to review tertiary education “to consider how changes, in technology, costs, and internationalisation, might change the way we fund, organise and deliver tertiary education and training in the future” (English and Joyce 2015). In this environment, academics must demonstrate that they themselves are productive, entrepreneurial citizens who can generate commercially exploitable research and attract sponsorship, external research funding, more and more students, and a global following.

Other recent initiatives are less about productivity and more concerned with support. Chief among these is the establishment of Ako Aotearoa, the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence, introduced in 2006 as part of a government initiative to improve the quality of teaching in tertiary education, and started by a consortium of six tertiary institutions. Located in the capital city, Wellington, it has regional hub branches in Auckland, Palmerston North, and Christchurch and is funded by the Tertiary Education Commission. Serving the entire tertiary sector, Ako Aotearoa’s vision is to produce the “best possible educational outcomes for all learners” (Ako Aotearoa n.d.). Ako Aotearoa sponsors and administers the national tertiary teaching excellence awards and supports an academy of award winners. They also support and sponsor conferences, symposia, and professional development workshops on tertiary education, as well as funding research into tertiary learning and teaching.Footnote 3

Women in Leadership (WIL) is another support initiative also introduced in 2006. WIL is working to increase the percentage of women in senior academic and leadership roles in New Zealand universities and to “promote women’s self-belief…and challenge women to think beyond gender biases and the deficit focus of women’s leadership” (McGregor and McCarthy 2015). Developed by and for women, the programme is endorsed by Universities New Zealand-Te Pōkai Tara, and was initially funded by the Kate Edger Educational Charitable Trust, named in recognition of Kate Milligan Edger (1857–1935), the first woman in the British Empire to graduate, in 1877, with a Bachelor of Arts degree.Footnote 4 Women who participate in the week-long residential programme (there are programmes for academic and professional staff) are funded by their universities to attend. Since the introduction of the WIL programme, New Zealand has seen a slight but significant shift in the percentage of women at senior levels (Associate Professor or Professor) in New Zealand universities: from 19.19% in 2007 to 24.38% in 2012 (McGregor 2012).

All of these initiatives – those coming from economically-driven government edicts and those more grassroots programmes like WIL – have had and will continue to have an influence on the lives of early career academics in New Zealand universities. Externally imposed structures such as the PBRF mean that new academics in New Zealand universities are socialised into a different academic environment from that experienced by previous generations. It is important that we take stock of where this new generation of academics has come from, what drives and motivates them, what concerns them, and how they exercise their agency in this dynamic higher education environment. The following chapters therefore describe who New Zealand’s early career academics are, what they are doing, and the support they need to do it well, comparing their experiences, where appropriate, to those of other academics around the world.