Uni dumps bridging course for Maori Staff

A Waikato University course that helps Maori into tertiary education has been scrapped, placing the jobs of four staff in jeopardy.

Deputy vice chancellor Professor Doug Sutton announced on Thursday that the Te Timatanga Hou (TTH) bridging programme would not be offered next year or in the "foreseeable future".

The programme has an impressive reputation and has been mirrored right around the country.

TTH director Linda Ward said her staff were struggling with the fact that they might not have a job after Christmas.

But they were also "grieving for the loss of an ideal".

"TTH is a concept, an idea, that looks like it's just coming to an end," she said. "I keep wondering `do they really understand what they are throwing away'.

"The staff are upset, not for themselves, but for what the programme is."

A lot of Maori students "needed" the bridging programme to make the transition to university life, she said.

Professor Sutton said the programme had to be cut to keep the university's domestic student numbers in line with Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) targets.

The university had already exceeded its ministry-funded student numbers by more than 5 per cent this year, he said. Domestic applications to enrol at Waikato University next year were already up about 30 per cent on the same time last year, yet the commission had made little funding provision for that growth.

Professor Sutton said cutting the programme was a "difficult decision", particularly since Waikato University had the highest percentage of Maori students of any university. "But at the moment we don't have any other options."

He was in consultation with the affected staff. It was not yet clear if they would be made redundant or repositioned elsewhere in the university.

He said Maori students could still have the chance to prepare for university study through an agreement signed with Wintec.

Wintec will now offer most of the university's pre-degree Certificate of University Preparation (CUP) programmes – of which 42 per cent of students this year are Maori orPacific Islanders.

Wintec would have places for 150 equivalent fulltime students (EFTS) on top of the university's offering of 40 EFTS. This year the university had 200 EFTS CUP positions.

Wintec would contract university staff to deliver the Certificate of Preparation programme at the university's Hamilton campus.

Professor Sutton was saddened that funding cuts had forced the difficult decisions. He said a large number of potential students would have to be turned away from tertiary study next year for want of sufficient places.

That would have an adverse effect on the whole country.

"Tertiary education increases personal income, increases family well being and adds quality of life. So one would expect those to be reversed."

- © Fairfax NZ News