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Sunday, November 2, 2014

Mike Butler: Maori students avoid gravy train


Victoria University’s business school axed its Maori business programme because of little interest from Maori students who overwhelmingly opted for mainstream commerce programmes, the Dominion Post reported.

In 2012 there were 10 Maori students in the Maori Business programme and 360 in mainstream commerce programmes, according to Dean of Commerce Professor Bob Buckle.

No details of Maori business programme papers were available in the notice posted on the university’s website dated October 16, 2014, apart from a note that the School of Maori Studies there offers a major in Maori Resource Management, alongside other courses, that cover material similar.

The Maori Studies Department website at Victoria University Maori business topics included: Management of Maori Resources, Maori authorities, Maori small business, the treaty settlement process, advanced management of Maori resources, Maori business and entrepreneurship, and Maori culture and intellectual property issues.

The axed programme was established in 2000 and run by senior lecturers Matene Love and Aroha Mead.

Mead blamed the university when she said that “all that could have been done wasn’t done” to enhance and grow the programme. “It makes any future discussions about Maori-led teaching and research and Victoria Business School relationships with iwi and Maori businesses difficult”, she said.

However, anyone who has had anything to do with Victoria University know the extent to which administrators bend over backwards to smooth the way for Maori and Pacifika students with race-based mentoring, separate state-of-the-art facilities, and support groups to produce Maori and Pacific graduates, as the university says, who will contribute to Maori and Pacific community development and leadership.

Matene Love is the son of Sir Ngatata Love who was a professor of Maori business in the School of Management at Victoria University when he retired at the end of 2011.

In 2012, Sir Ngatata stepped aside from a number of positions representing Maori when the Serious Fraud Office said it was investigating $50-million of Wellington property sales in relation to the Wellington Tenths Trust.

It appears Maori commerce students don’t see the Treaty of Waitangi gravy train as a viable future and are opting for subjects that would give them a better chance of employment beyond graduation.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is a lot more of this crap going on than we get to hear about - and all funded by whom ? Heartening though that only 10 out of 370 were sufficiently dumb and brainwashed to fall for it ...

Native said...

These 369 students need to eat like anyother taniwha and they will consume much greater volumes of our universe than the 10 who are in there for the welfare of the community not the individual....Maori studies teach you respect for everything, including the people they will do business with.....there is no gravy train here, there is only one Studylink....whats with you...

Anonymous said...

To Native.

If Maori studies teach respect how is it then that the greatest percentage of prisoners in our jails are Maori???

Dave said...

Native, you are the the problem, why have a 'Maori' business studies at all. Is not creating a course defined by race and then only being able to attend if you are related in genes to that race not racist. We see countless examples of these openly racist policys in force right throughout NZ. But then it say we must do that in the treaty, doesn't it?

jh said...

How many institutions have a political purpose which is opposed to the status quo (European NZ) manufacturing memes and establishing a political correctness (all on good salaries with superannuation thrown in)?

Anonymous said...

To JH. Probably the Auckland City Council with its bevy of unelected "councillors" and tribal groups whose job it is to ensure that any pieces of land that they think were trodden on by a family member are protected from developent, and even its special Ngati Whatua Room, which was blessed and consecrated (I was going to write - desecrated) by Mayor Len Brown. That's probably why Len Brown wants his new railway line. I wonder whether he will call it 'The Gravy Train"?