John Raine: Where to With Education and Research Policy

Cultural Re-Engineering through the Education System

The 2020s have been a period of cultural change in academia throughout the Western world. In countries such as the USA, Canada, the U.K. and Australia, where universities have been heavily captured by woke agendas, we have yet to see a marked loss of momentum in “progressive” left wing politics on campus. This embrace of postmodernism and identity politics has also pervaded the primary and secondary education system. It has also infected to some degree the country’s research system.

New Zealand universities have increasingly been seen internationally as an extreme case of the march of critical social justice and diversity/equity/inclusion (DEI) politics through tertiary education. The politicisation of NZ academia has reflected that in other Western countries around race, climate change alarmism and gender identity. New Zealand’s distinctive focus in racial politics had been around the infusion of Te Ao Māori into the university and significant decolonisation activism, but we have seen numerous antisemitic or pro-Palestine protests in this country as well, notably in 2024.

Academic Institutions and related professional associations have mandated requirements for employees to adhere to their organisation’s version of the Treaty Principles, a particular version of NZ history, the sanctification of Māori culture in the organisation. There are many stories of staff who have objected to working in an environment of cultural authoritarianism having little option but to either remain silent, find themselves on a redundancy list, or resign.

Despite efforts to protect academic freedom and freedom of speech by the Christopher Luxon-led Coalition government, Te Ao Māori cultural obligations on staff and students have not lessened significantly. The Treaty of Waitangi is silent on education, but Treaty Principles content continues to be mandatory in some university taught courses such as medicine, nursing, engineering and the law.

On top of these political/cultural issues, universities are living with unresolved administrative staffing bloat and the steady ingress of artificial intelligence (AI) into post-secondary education. Both these cause additional financial stress.

Ongoing Treaty-focused cultural re-engineering has been promoted in education at all levels by the Ministry of Education (MoE) since 2000. At this point a complete reboot of the MoE is needed, requiring policies and operations to be culturally neutral. While the MoE must clearly advise the government of the day on latest educational developments worldwide and recommend policy, we cannot afford for this to be entangled with ideology, e.g. around race or gender. Can we be confident that the MoE right now is simply implementing Education Minister Erica Stanford’s reforms focused on maths, literacy and science basics?

Universities still wrestle with maintaining an environment of open inquiry and academic discourse, free from political or cultural indoctrination. Academic freedom is not entirely protected and will likely not be as long as the ironically now-intolerant progressive liberal ideological thinking dominates areas of academia such as education and the social sciences.

The Research System

In the public research funding system, Vision Matauranga requirements around engagement with iwi and inclusion of Māori research team members have been extremely difficult for researchers in the sciences and engineering, for example to respond to, in some cases jeopardising the chance of funding for a valuable project in fundamental science, e.g. nuclear physics.

Significant funding has been allocated to projects in that draw on matauranga Māori. Some of these, funded as science, such as the whale song and Kauri trees project, are more involved with myth and spiritual elements than modern science. Research drawing on te Ao Māori will most likely find value in the social sciences, anthropology and possibly environmental science - it must be remembered that when Europeans arrived in NZ, Māori society, without the wheel, mathematics, a written language or metal smelting, was a stone age society at the scientific and technological level of other developing societies prior to 3,000 BC. Claims for the value of Māori traditional knowledge continue beyond validated science – for example Professor Jacinta Ruru on tack­ling the “cli­mate crisis” by embracing “Indi­gen­ous lead­er­ship in con­serving our lands and waters” (Otago Daily Times 27th February 2026). However, freedom of speech must also be protected.

A major revision to research publicly funded through MBIE is in progress, but we have yet to see whether it will stop funding culturally interesting but scientifically valueless projects.

Reducing Administrative Bloat and a Better Financial Footing

Because of the move to a market-led funding model for the universities in 1990, they have since been funded partly through student fees. They have also operated under increasing financial pressure as increases in Government funding had fallen, by as much as ~40% below the cumulative CPI increase by 2023.

The period 1990-2020 was marked by rapid bureaucratic growth. The ratio of non-academic to academic staff blew out to 1.5 to 1 - much higher than in Australia, the UK, or the USA (where it is about 0.8 to 1). Much student fee income has gone into greatly expanded central services, to some extent ironically into areas such as such as marketing, communications, business and community outreach which have made the universities more visible to student “clients” and other stakeholders than 40 years ago. But there has also been huge growth in the employment of numerous non-academic “managers” and support staff in areas like Human Resources, Health and Safety, Student Learning Support and Pastoral Care, Māori and Pasifika directorates, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) support.

I would recommend that Government work with the universities on a new capped enrolment model that focuses away from growth back onto excellence with enrolments reduced as a fraction of New Zealand’s growing population. This would push more school leavers towards much-needed polytechnic trade qualifications and cheaper online options. Moreover, we face rapid changes caused by the penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the education system, reflecting the ongoing growth of AI in the public and private sector. This will cause fundamental changes in how universities operate.

Reducing overhead costs must be a key part of a reshaping of our universities and the system should aim to being the ratio of non-academic to academic staff down to, say, 0.9 to 1 or lower. This would be aided by the widespread penetration of AI in areas of the administration such as finance, student enrolments and academic administration.

Overall, the beneficial effects of such changes would be greater operational efficiency, a proportionally lower draw on taxpayer funding and student fees themselves being held below the rate of inflation.

Looking Ahead

Our universities must strive to maintain cultural neutrality and recognise the cultures of all of the ~100 ethnicities of their student population. Māori culture and a truthful history of our country must be optionally available to all students, but decolonisation activism has no place in the taught curriculum. By all means teach “other ways of knowing” but such instruction should sit separately from modern science. Engineering, Medicine and Science curricula must be constantly updated to recognise latest knowledge but without losing fundamentals that underpin these disciplines. This is a further challenge that AI may either help or hinder.

In the end, universities must move into the AI age while ensuring that they still embrace the fundamental idea of what a university is, e.g. as embodied in this statement from the Bologna Accord of 1988 on the role of the university in the search for impartial truth:

“The university is an autonomous institution at the heart of societies differently organised because of geography and historical heritage; it produces, examines, appraises, and hands down culture by research and teaching. To meet the need of the world around it, its research and teaching must be morally and intellectually independent of all political authority and economic power.”

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John Raine is an Emeritus Professor of Engineering and has formerly held positions as Pro Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at AUT, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Albany and International) at Massey University, and Pro Vice Chancellor (Enterprise and International) at University of Canterbury.