National Executive make a submission to the University Advisory Group

Graduate Women New Zealand (GWNZ) submission to the University Advisory Group

Submitted by Dr Jo Innes, on behalf of the GWNZ National Executive, 28 May 2024

Introduction

Graduate Women New Zealand (GWNZ) recognises the purpose of University Advisory Group is to provide advice to the government on the New Zealand university system, informed by engagement with the sector. The Group’s report is expected to inform policy development.

GWNZ believe in empowering women. We do this through education, advocacy and connection.  AS a not-for-profit organisation, we have been contributing to the betterment of New Zealand for over 100 years. Our approach is to get you thinking – we challenge conventional thinking; our perspective is unapologetically feminist – we speak up for woman’s rights; and as a social connector we are naturally drawn to collaborative ways of thinking and working.

GWNZ welcomes the opportunity to submit this paper as part of the University Advisory Group inquiry into the New Zealand’s university system (the System). We have provided some context and then a high-level response to selected questions. The references are selected intentionally as they offer disruptive thinking. Please note, the submission provides views of the National Executive as there has not been time to seek input from our wider membership.

Context

As with any system, the university system is influenced by wider society changes. We are experiencing significant change in areas such as the labour market, rise of tertiary consumer demand and new technologies. Some of these changes have a greater impact on women than men. 

From Education at a Glance (OECD, 2021): In New Zealand, 67% of women participated in formal and/or non-formal education and training in 2016, compared to 68% of men. Family reasons were reported as barriers to participation in formal and/or non-formal education and training by 25% of women compared to 10% of men. Currently, the System is graduating more women than men (49% of 25–34-year-old women had a tertiary qualification in 2020 compared to 39% of their male peers), but participation is not balanced. Women represented 30% of new entrants in engineering, manufacturing and construction programmes and 28% in information and communication technologies. In contrast, they represented 82% of new entrants to the field of education, a sector traditionally dominated by women.  This is not intended to belittle these important and useful occupations; the point is these choices can constrain women’s lifetime earnings. 

While we have high levels of participation in tertiary education, as a nation our equity statistics are poor. In nearly all OECD countries, 25–64-year-old women earn less than their male peers. Women with tertiary education in New Zealand have the lowest earnings relative to men with a similar education level, earning 79% as much. The above inequities are more evident for Māori and Pasifika women, who experience lower levels of participation, retention and completion in the System. 

In response to these society changes and statistics, our System could be more responsive to women and their interest in lifelong learning – to be more creative in how the System understands and meets their needs and their desire to control how and what they learn and who from. For women, there is a greater need to combine family, work and study. As they move in and out of careers, women rely on education to enable them to anticipate and participate fully, as they can, in the rapidly changing labour market. 

A university education provides not only learning and knowledge, but also critical attributes such as critical thinking and resilience. Our university system has a critical role to play in ensuring all learners and researchers, but particularly women, are ready to apply and benefit from new technologies as they become available. For our Māori and Pasifika women, the challenge is to provide a culturally responsive education experience that works for them; enables them to participate fully in New Zealand’s future.

Responses to selected questions

1 - What should be the primary functions of universities for a contemporary world?

Although the environment is changing the purpose and value of universities remains at its core the advancement of knowledge and its dissemination by teaching, research and knowledge transfer. 

• There is an opportunity to establish a clear purpose for the System that reflects value from the customers point of view (New Zealand Inc) vs growth of the individual parts (Universities). 
• Our System needs a diverse knowledge base vs the traditional focus and privilege on the “hard” sciences. 

By customers we mean students, researchers and the business community. 

• Primary functions of universities need to reflect what matters to these customers. 
• A fit for purpose System, must also be designed to offer the intrinsic skills that students gain from studying at university that are more than the sum of the knowledge they have learnt.
• We believe that the functions of the System should also explicitly support best outcomes for women, particularly those not currently succeeding. 

2 - What should be the long-term shape of the university sector in New Zealand so that it meets these primary roles?

We support designing the sector as a university System. We see the following features of a system as important:

A system is designed from the outside in (Seddon, 2010). The System needs to understand and be responsive to demand; to meet the needs of all students/diverse learners- school leavers, second chance learners, older adults retraining to meet the needs of a changing labour market and women. Students prefer to choose a learning environment that meets their needs. To do this the System needs to understand their needs and design the System to respond to these needs. If the System is going to address the imbalance in women’s participation, your review  needs to give attention to  understanding what women choose to study and why.

A key feature of a System is to receive and act on feedback; it needs to measure the effectiveness of the System as a whole. Measurement needs to examine the ability of the System to deliver purpose from the customer’s point of view. A measurement framework would measure and reward providers for good performance defined as adding value to customers. Innovations in tertiary education delivery must be supported by robust measurement so that there can be confidence in the System. This should not only be quality assurance of the provider but should also cover the quality of the learning outcomes and the impact of research. Throughout the review and beyond, we encourage you to seek robust gender analysis, of both the current situation for women in tertiary education, and the potential impacts on women of any proposed new models for the sector.

A system is not the sum of the parts (universities) but the product of their interactions. The shape of the System would enable collaboration plus it would enable students /staff to move across the System. As students, particularly women, combine family, work and study they are more likely to demand greater flexibility in the qualifications/courses they can take along with more fluid timelines. This will require a means to assess competency and to unbundle courses from qualifications. In the future students may want to build their own qualification with courses provided by more than one provider.

We recognise that the system must be flexible and adaptive, and there are many directions that can be taken that will support good outcomes for students, their teachers, and their eventual employers, but it must also ensure that no one is left behind. This shape must be balanced with the “massification” of education which is not infinitely sustainable. We believe customer demand will inevitably turn away from low-value mass proposition to a high-design-value proposition.

3 - What are the barriers (excluding fiscal) that limit the universities from operating efficiently and effectively for the benefit of New Zealand?

University governance /decision making is often separated from the outside community, the needs of students and the work of the university. For many institutions, they appear to have moved away from the purpose of the university and now focus on a defacto purpose of ‘make money’. Stronger connections would enable better understanding and hence better-informed decision making.

Short term annual cycles lead to short term planning, a culture that reacts to problems and consequently improvement is approached as a series of short-term projects designed to deliver outputs but not necessarily sustainable improvement. Longer term horizons would enable longer term planning, capability development, and longer-term continuous improvement initiatives that achieve emergent learning and sustainable improvement.

4 - Can the eight universities function better as a holistic system to meet New Zealand’s needs? If so, how to establish a more differentiated yet cooperative sector?

Yes, but it will need a change in mindset – our universities are often led by academics who bring an individual mindset and traditional (outdated) command and control management practices. These deeply set mindsets create a barrier to moving towards a systems thinking and collaborative way of working. 

• The System currently rewards growth by volume (student numbers/EFTS etc), and individual effort (academic careers are rewarded for individual effort/PBRF). If the mindset is to change the government needs to introduce levers that reward and / or enable the mindset and hence the behaviour it is seeking. 
• The double loop thinking proposed by Argyris (2002) suggests senior leaders need to move from ‘doing things better’ (short term operational projects that improve the system as it exists) to having the courage to ‘do better things’ (think about and challenge the underlying mindset).

If the System is going to function better as a holistic system, there must be some rationalisation of what is being offered by individual universities. Previously, the Ministry explored removing duplication across the country. Has the effectiveness of this work been assessed? An alternative approach could be to enable universities to be responsive to the needs of selected groups, to pursue different strategies, to differentiate themselves. Kalsbeek (2006) proposed and implemented a four-fold construct for differentiating and comparing institutional approaches. Each of the four but distinct orientations offer opportunities for collaboration. 

• Academic orientation – the System through its academic programmes meets the needs of New Zealand Inc via an educated citizenry and educated workforce. The System could collaborate on offering high quality work-integrated learning placements across New Zealand vs the current situation where institutions compete for placements
• Student orientation focuses on the student as an individual with specific needs. Quality teaching resources could be developed for specific student cohorts and shared across the System. For example, for professional degrees like Performance Music graduates are required to have studied two languages.  Not every university can sustain French, German and Italian departments but it is important that the System offers a range of foreign languages 
• Administration orientation is concerned with the coordination of support processes. The System could create shared high value support processes such as admission, enrolment and academic advice; hence reducing the need for expensive marketing campaigns driven by competition for students.
• Market centred orientation is concerned with how entities are positioned in the market and how market needs influence what the institution offers. Collaboration opportunities are available in developing critical mass for an identified market need. Hendy and Callaghan (2013) provided evidence for how critical mass initiatives facilitate innovation. We have structures in place that connect high performing/like-minded academics, such as the professional schools (vet, medicine), CoREs and National Science Challenges. Have these worked as collaborative initiatives? Could we do more to facilitate critical mass and enhance our capability to collaborate?

5 - What is the appropriate mix of offerings in teaching, research, and knowledge transfer across the system to meet economic, environmental, and social challenges?

We welcome the approach taken here asking about the mix of all three offerings.  It is our position that an aligned and supportive teaching-research nexus within the System as well as knowledge transfer is fundamental. This is a key characteristic of leading university sectors in the world. ‘Research driven teaching’ ensures that students are exposed to cutting edge thinking and are well prepared, either for future graduate study or to make a positive contribution to the workforce. 

To achieve an appropriate mix, the System must address the imbalance between teaching & research. Currently, individual research performance is positioned as being more important for career advancement than teaching performance. Where you have outstanding teaching, research and knowledge transfer in a single person the learning experience is magic. To achieve this nexus consistently would require a significant change in mindset and input into capability development. 

We must retain both quality teachers and researchers in New Zealand or local and international students will not want to study here. Is there an opportunity to explore a model where teaching scholarship is valued as is research capability. If this were to be the model adopted, these teachers would need to be highly skilled at applying current research generated by others, facilitating critical thinking and knowledge transfer. 

The area of knowledge transfer continues to be a challenge, although there is much attention given to the topic in the literature. While the traditional approach of knowledge transfer by publication will continue there is opportunity to be more intentional with our approach to improve the effectiveness and shorten the timeline for knowledge transfer. New Zealand is a small enough country to have a university System that has strong partnerships with business/industry at multiple levels. The System needs to be designed to reward effective and impactful teaching and research partnerships. 

Technology has allowed all of us to access huge amounts of information. Digital literacy should be a core competency for staff and students as it is applied to teaching, research and knowledge transfer. Additional to digital literacy, universities have a key role to play to ensuring our graduates have the requisite critical thinking skills to sift through, prioritise, understand and appropriately apply the information available. To optimise new technologies, the System needs to significantly invest in the development and application of technologies for teaching, research and knowledge transfer. There must be opportunities to create incentives for investment costs to be shared. 

References

Ackoff, R.L. (2006). Why few organisation adopt system thinking. Systems Research and Behavioural Science Syst. Res. 23. pp 705 - 708 

Argyris, C (2002). Double-Loop Learning, Teaching, and Research. Academy of Management Learning & Education, Dec 2002., Vol 1 (2), pp. 2026-218

Hendy,S. & Callaghan, P. (2013). Get off the grass. Kickstarting New Zealand’s innovation economy. Auckland University Press: Auckland.

Kalsbeek, D. (2006). Some Reflections on SEM Structures and Strategies. College & University Journal. Vol 81. (3). pp. 3-10

Seddon, J. (2010). Delivering Public Services that Work – Volume 1. Systems thinking in the Public Sector: Case Studies. Triarchy Press: Dorset