Yesterday’s announcement of NZ$128 million in new funding for universities has naturally been welcomed as a badly-needed reprieve. But we have to ask, is this a bailout for struggling institutions, or is it just a Band-Aid on a tertiary sector with deeper structural wounds?
It’s clear the pandemic massively exacerbated the challenges caused by years of funding below inflation rates. All universities have seen previous redundancy rounds, some of which may have been inevitable.
