Massey to finish Dip Ag course with a bang

Enrolments less than minimum

Massey University has pulled the plug on its once famous Dip Ag course due to lack of enrolments, but teaching staff are determined to bury it in style.

"We can't let this go out with a whimper," former course director Peter MacGillivray says. "Rather it should go out with a bang to farewell a course that we loved and which shaped us in so many ways."

He and the current director Warren Anderson have organised a reunion for March 12-14 at the Palmerston North campus.

They are expecting as many as 500 former students to attend.

The Massey Diploma in Agriculture goes back at least 75 years.

At its peak it was attracting more than 80 students a year and became a revered course that started the careers of many of the country's agricultural leaders. Enrolments have dropped to less than the minimum required to meet revised funding criteria.

Massey is also re-evaluating other shorter programmes, such as the Diploma in Horticulture.

Mr Anderson says tighter financial times are affecting Massey, but the university has not stopped its commitment to agriculture, which is one of the core areas to be retained and supported, while some others must have had freezes or reductions in funding. The three and four-year degree programmes are to be retained as they have the best return for limited resources such as financial, facilities and staff, as well as being most likely to meet educational, technical and social obligations to the community. The diploma programme had low enrolments of under 30-40 equivalent fulltime students, he said.

"New Zealand universities are now funded partly by their research outputs, under performance-based research funding (PBRF).

"This is competitive, and academic sections of the university are funded according to the research activity and peer esteem of its academic staff."

Mr Anderson said staff could not succeed in PBRF and at the same time cater for small groups in one-year sub-degree courses.

"The Diploma in Agriculture was not singled out in that context and other programmes are targeted to go as well," Mr Anderson said.

"The final decision has not been made on them yet, and that includes the Diploma of Horticulture."

- © Fairfax NZ News