Whitireia joins exodus from Lindale as student numbers fall

Whitireia Community Polytechnic plans to move from its Lindale campus to a new site on the Kapiti Coast.

Deputy chief executive Arthur Graves said student numbers had halved during the past two years from the equivalent of 300 full-time students to about 150 attending face-to-face courses.

The fall had prompted a change of focus. The polytechnic plans to pull out of its site at Lindale, just north of Paraparaumu, at the end of this year and move to a smaller central Paraparaumu site.

It will focus more on extramural courses, online learning and specialist mobile classes to be held around the district, including at schools.

"The campus was developed at Lindale on the assumption a railway station would be built there, Lindale Tourist Complex would boom and Paraparaumu development would head north," Mr Graves said.

Since those expectations had not eventuated, the polytechnic was now looking for an alternative site and planned to move next year, he said.

"We are refocusing and want to offer a whole new range of programmes in a more flexible way. We will have a more visible niche campus for face-to-face courses and will continue with food, hospitality, nursing and photography courses."

Part-time, early morning, evening and online courses would help cater to about half the population on the coast who travelled to Wellington five days a week to work, he said.

Research had shown that, as well as demand for office skills, literacy, numeracy, tourism, retail and distribution, construction, manufacturing and horticulture, there was also demand from Maori businesses for vocational training and qualifications.

"Kapiti has an interesting demographic featuring a cluster of small communities with their own economic professions – horticulture, food production and processing to the north and retail and urban services to the south, including a large rest-home industry.

"We want to cater more to the learning requirements of these local communities."

- © Fairfax NZ News