Client: Tertiary Accord New Zealand

Date: October 2006

Author(s): Kel Sanderson, Adolf Stroombergen (Infometrics), Jason Leung-Wai, Ganesh Nana

This paper project was primarily directed at exploring the economic and employment role of tertiary education in the context of an increasingly skills-constrained economy. From this exploration we assess implications for a framework for funding tertiary education.

While our investigations were broad, we reached three key findings. In condensed form, these were: firstly, transforming the New Zealand economy needs more people, with more skills, of all skill types; secondly, key drivers of NZ’s continuing growth are the supply of people into the labour force and the supply of those already in the labour force and the tertiary sector has been central to these drivers; and, thirdly, tertiary funding through the EFTS system works mostly, but requires modifications to increase certainty, provides no surprises and to support present strengths.

BERL#4365