Tertiary students in NZ are no more than cash cows

Continuing in our popular series of Migrant Tales.

Today’s tale was left a message responding to this article Kiwi Kids Nose-Dive in the Education Stakes which was about NZ’s disastrous plunge in the international PISA scores.

The author has a broad experience of the tertiary education system in New Zealand and says not only does it fail to deliver it is also fraudulent and money grubbing.

While this survey obviously focuses on primary and secondary education it would be interesting to see how New Zealand ranks when it comes to tertiary education as well. Having been a student at 4 New Zealand tertiary providers I was shocked at how poor the standards were.

In my first experience with the New Zealand tertiary system I went onto a course with a private training provider. I was outright lied too from the very beginning to get me onto the course. There was no way I was going to be able to pass it. The fact was that all they wanted was my money, and this became apparent one the fees had gone into their account and their attitude dramatically changed. I ended up leaving. Their lies cost me a large amount of money and their was nothing I could do about it.

After being ripped off for such a large sum of money I was cautious about further training, but I enrolled in a short course with another provider to test the water before a larger investment in education. The second training provider, had teachers with such a low level of knowledge on their subjects that they were ‘teaching’ by handing out a booklet, and learning the topic from their students. Suffice to say that once I had completed the qualification I didn’t do any further training with them.

The third provider was a polytech, where I began a degree. Again I was cautious, but this course was structured in such a way that I could exit at the end of each year and still gain a qualification for each year studied. It quickly became apparent that they didn’t use textbooks, and they reduced the number of elective subjects from 12 to 2 within a week of the course beginning. During the second year they informed us that the third year was a repeat of the second year with only a few minor alterations. Not wanting to waste time and money doing the same training twice I left after the second year. The provider then outright refused to issue my full qualifications. Since I had met all the requirements I was outraged. When I threatened to report them for fraud they backed down and reluctantly agreed to issue the qualifications I had earned. However, unbeknownst to me they were already under investigation by the police for embezzlement and fraud, and were on the front page of the newspaper 2 weeks after I left! I got my qualifications from them, but was absolutely disgusted with their conduct.

My final experience with the New Zealand tertiary sector was with one of New Zealand’s universities (which are controlled by a different set of standards than the polytechs and private training providers). Training started off well, and I was relieved that finally I could actually get an education without all the nonsense previously experienced. But, after 2 years everything changed; the university eliminated printed study materials on most papers (while still charging students for them), started sending out materials late when they were available (one paper had materials arrive 8 weeks late on a paper that was 16 weeks in duration), made online materials available either at the last minute or late, left bits out of online materials that would be discovered later, and started having very large numbers of mistakes in their materials. Absolutely disgusted to be experiencing this sort of nonsense again I wrote a formal letter of complaint to the Vice Chancellor. There was no interest whatsoever shown in solving any of the problems I detailed, and all I got in response was a long list of lame excuses. I soon realized that the university itself was not interested in providing quality education anymore. Their policies had become entirely centered around profit to the detriment of their students – greed had become their primary value.

As a result of my experiences I could never recommend getting tertiary education in New Zealand and would highly advise that students go overseas if they are serious about getting qualifications. Tertiary education in New Zealand is a greed driven, money grabbing business that has no regard for providing quality education, and only exists to suck as much money out of students as possible.

Related articles

• Kiwi Kids Nose Dive in the Education Stakes (e2nz.org)
• NZ’s Education System Gets a Resounding F, Must Try Harder. (e2nz.org)
• Tertiary institutions face funding clawbacks (radionz.co.nz)
• Union calls for $1b tertiary education boost (radionz.co.nz)
• Brian Fallow: Tertiary pay benefit surprisingly small (nzherald.co.nz)
• Fewer signing up for tertiary study (radionz.co.nz)
• Migrant Tales – The UK Plumber’s Tale (e2nz.org)
• Migrant Tales – British Sparkie Can’t Find Work (e2nz.org)
• Migrant Tales – Hong Kong Chinese: Moving to New Zealand is a Big Mistake (e2nz.org)
• Migrant Tales – NZ Not The Land Of Promise For Me (e2nz.org)