If we were a learning nation

2023 was a big year. For me, it marked the 10th anniversary of academyEX (home of The Mind Lab and Tech Futures Lab) and my thirtieth year in higher education and technology.? It is also the year I delved deep into the question I have been asking myself for too long.?

What is really going on with New Zealand higher education??

Case in point. As 2023 came to a close, the media lifted the financial lid on Te Pūkenga, the uber institute of Aotearoa, and its eye-watering $185 million debt. This mega institute supports over 240,000 students, making it one of the largest education institutes in the world.?

Given its current financial predictment is hard to imagine a more difficult organisational turnaround, even without the imminent dismantling and re-establishment of the new educational entity that is promised under the new government.?

But Te Pūkenga is just one example of an education indicator highlighting the need for new innovation, new thinking and better solutions in education. All participants in the higher education ecosystem are increasingly tasked with navigating and balancing the higher delivery costs driven by higher wages, more expensive technical and built infrastructure, higher insurance, and the rapidly escalating cost of cyber and privacy protection measures. This is even before the investment is made to keep learning content up-to-date and relevant.

Last year, we also saw the tension of the rising costs as it impacted all of our universities. Universities, like all tertiary education institutes, work hard to retain their faculty, research and administration staff.? But with lower student enrolments from the domestic market, soft enrolments from the international market and higher delivery costs, something had to give. Redundancies were a feature of the education landscape, and protests became the backdrop of dissatisfaction from all parts of the sector.

What are the levers of education? Which countries invest the most in learning and development, and what are the benefits? And who can we learn from?

The New Zealand government is our country’s biggest employer. This includes people working in transport, health, education, social services and housing. For those who don’t work directly for the government, the chances are they will work for a business or enterprise where there is an element of government funding required to deliver their services.?

As a country, we don’t benefit from an abundance of internationally focused, domestic-grown organisations that drive national competitiveness and attract international investment and highly skilled talent. We are a small advanced economy by definition, but not by the composition of where people work, who they are employed by, and the type of work we undertake.?

How do we create an economy of high-impact, financially sustainable businesses if our economy is not underpinned by a higher education system that supports innovation, commercialisation and research? How do we create the leaders of the future without our continued reliance on the global experience of returning ex-pat Kiwis or highly skilled migrants who fill many of our C-suite roles? What becomes of a country with a rapidly declining birth rate and a workforce that is ageing at pace towards retirement in unprecedented numbers? Who are the skilled and knowledgeable workforce of tomorrow if we don’t invest in learning and development today?

At academyEX, I am surrounded by professional students aged 35 and 55 years who work full-time while studying part-time. These students have returned to study regardless of the weight of their other responsibilities and commitments. Over the past ten years, the demographics of these students have been remarkably consistent. Firstly, our students are predominantly female; they are highly likely to have arrived in New Zealand at some stage of their life as a migrant or they have returned to New Zealand after living and working offshore. They generally have big jobs to do, but they appreciate the need to constantly invest in new knowledge and create new networks and connections with like-minded people.?

However, these adult students who are returning to postgraduate study as working professionals represent a small minority of the New Zealand workforce. So few Kiwi adults undertake formal studies after completing their undergraduate degrees that we are recognised as an outlier by the OECD.?

My view as an educator and technologist is that the challenges we face in the tertiary education system are not new; as a country, we have never valued education and learning in the same way highly competitive markets do. Having the government and its many agencies as our biggest employer or being self-employed or working in a small business reduces much of the need to stay relevant and competitive as comparable small advanced economies such as Singapore or Ireland do.

What I do know from three decades in the higher education sector as a founder, CEO, and contributor to many education boards, organisations, and agencies is that the path to improvement won’t come from lessening access to education or from saving our way to better outcomes.

In the absence of a highly competitive talent market, I too often see learning and professional development boiled down to commitment to the occasional participation in industry conferences or listening to podcasts on the way to work. There is nothing like being in a room of people engaged in meaningful, thought-provoking new conversations. There is no replacement for learning from experts or people who share their war stories and knowledge from the frontline, where debate, questions and opinions flow.

Like the many posts that have filled LinkedIn over recent months, I sense the growing sense of unease with the rise of problems that are short of solutions. I know how we got here, and I know more of the same won’t get us to where we aspire to be. Education answers so many of our greatest challenges, from climate change to health inequity and housing inequality to growth and prosperity. With knowledge, we are capable of so much more, but first, we need to build a culture that truly values learning.

In my opinion, countries such as Norway have got it right. They have used their considerable financial reserves and strong economy to provide an open door for all students to study for free, regardless of where they are from. They are already seeing the benefits of enticing bright, motivated students to a country that is facing the same declining birth rate challenges as the rest of the developed world. They are committed to building and investing in the future workforce, future talent pool and future taxpayers to support their economy.

In twenty years, their economy will have the advantage of this education investment as a nation of highly skilled entrepreneurs, innovators and employees. In contrast, we will see record-low participation in higher education for no other reason than fewer women are having babies today. Fewer students will push the cost of education up for those who do choose to study, and access will become more difficult for the same communities that are underserved by education today. Fewer graduates will mean New Zealand will have an increasing reliance on skilled migrants, who will also be in demand for roles the world over.?

The flow-on effect of decisions that are made today for an education system in turmoil, with record levels of debt and declining students, is the immense impact it will have on our future economic strength as the level of tax revenue from employment decreases as demand for superannuation increases.

If I were the Minister of Education, I would drop everything to fight hard to build a team of experts who can reimagine what higher education in Aotearoa looks like in 2024 and beyond. I would bring Māori, Pacifica, youth and employers to the table, along with proven innovators and people who understand systems change. I would turn over every stone to find every dollar available to fund the education system so that access is truly for all, including international students who want to call New Zealand home. I would support a countywide culture that celebrates learning and development and amplify the benefits across all sectors. I would invest in teachers, educators and academics to attract and retain the very best people leading education from the front.

I would dive deep into the Ministry of Education to find the champions of progress and people who understand the world has moved a long way from pre-pandemic times.

I would encourage institutes to create new education models and modalities for learning to support people who learn in different ways or those who think differently than the mainstream and for students who live in less populated regions where access to learning is limited.

I would champion every student who graduates as a role model for all others to build skills and knowledge in areas where there are mass vacancies and limited pipeline for new talent. I would stand on my soapbox and talk about the benefits of all forms of training, from vocational to trade, apprenticeships to degrees and PhDs, as the most important way to turn this country around.?

Ten years from now, we could be a country where people want to live and learn, where people choose to stay to take advantage of our excellent education system and where students graduate with a sense of achievement and excitement for the future. But only if we stop talking about what went wrong and focus on everything that could go right.