John Raine: Ministerial Spring Cleaning and the Parable of the Rowing Eight

Matthew Hooton’s recommendation that Nicola Willis cut the cost of the Public Service by 25% (NZ Herald 22^nd December) reminded me of a story.

Years ago, the engineering community was getting fired up about new Japanese business and manufacturing efficiency methods, and “kaizen” (continuous improvement) and “just in time” were being bandied about. 

Peter Schwerdtfeger, David Lillis and John Raine: New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Sector in Deep Financial Crisis

...the historical telos of universities as depositories of our collective cultural wisdom and knowledge is thus changed from forms of debate and free speech to those of multiple truths and power plays to impose dominance. In this way, the universities and those academics within them are transformed from fallible but authoritative judges and teachers of the sum of human knowledge to being part of a broader political struggle between a binary of oppressed versus the oppressors.
- Doug Stokes in "Against decolonisation" (p. 81-82)

Universities losing their Best People

As we write, several universities in New Zealand are facing severe financial problems and cuts to expenditure.