New
Zealand universities have been undergoing a cultural reshaping, and Government
intervention is needed if we are to avoid adverse societal and financial consequences.
Earlier articles by Raine, Lillis and Schwerdtfeger [e.g. 1, 2] have already covered
this issue in some detail.
New Zealand has three wānanga as publicly owned tertiary education institutions, providing tertiary education in a Māori cultural context, and creating these institutions was positive for young Māori. They are: Te Wānanga o Raukawa (1981), Te Wānanga o Aotearoa (1984), and Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiarangi (1991). Why then, should our universities appear to be on a determined march towards indigenisation that will leave them looking like wānanga and no longer recognisable as universities in the internationally understood sense?
