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Speaker 1: The government's rejected recommendations for a more elite university system.

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Speaker 1: This is a report from the University Advisory Group. It

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Speaker 1: recommended making entry requirements harder and limiting which institutions can

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Speaker 1: award masters or doctorate degrees. But the government has said

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Speaker 1: no to all of this, and only sixty three or

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Speaker 1: only twenty three of the sixty three recommendations have actually

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Speaker 1: been accepted. Chair of that advisory group that wrote the

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Speaker 1: report was Sir Peter Gluckman, who's with us now, Peter, Hello,

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Speaker 1: hither Okay, why would we make the entry requirements harder?

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Speaker 2: Well, I think we need to be clear that across

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Speaker 2: the Western world over the last forty years, we've massively

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Speaker 2: increased the number of students and to university when many

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Speaker 2: of them need to be at a good polytechnic so

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Speaker 2: they can move on to careers. What we need to

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Speaker 2: do is make sure that universities produce graduates of the

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Speaker 2: quality for jobs that need university graduates.

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Speaker 1: So you basically have universities just for the really smart kids.

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Speaker 2: No, not necessarily, I think, and it's not one of

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Speaker 2: the major The primary recommendations in our report always saying

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Speaker 2: is we want to make sure that we maintain standards.

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Speaker 2: We need to make sure on the one hand we

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Speaker 2: have high quality entry and we've had problems with our

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Speaker 2: with our secondary school education as you know. And on

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Speaker 2: the other hand, we need to promote equity. So there's

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Speaker 2: a fine balance to achieve.

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Speaker 1: Okay, and so basically the same idea behind limiting the

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Speaker 1: masters and doctorate degrees.

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Speaker 2: Well, universities have a particular environment. That's why they created

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Speaker 2: They have a different funding base. They used to create

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Speaker 2: a complete environment for training people to use it with

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Speaker 2: research degrees. Polytechnics don't have that structure. They're not designed

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Speaker 2: to do that. There are parts of Polynechnicus and one

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Speaker 2: Nunger that do. And so we again were trying to

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Speaker 2: make sure that we don't see degree inflation and that

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Speaker 2: we actually have degrees that maintain news on high quality

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Speaker 2: and standards globally.

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Speaker 1: Are we not fighting I mean, aren't we fighting a

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Speaker 1: losing battle globally because globally the bachelor's has just become

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Speaker 1: a bit of a nothing, isn't it.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's the point. We want our universities to be

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Speaker 2: of high quality, to produce high quality graduates. Yes, that

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Speaker 2: contribute to society.

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Speaker 1: No, I know what you're saying. What I'm saying is.

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Speaker 1: What I'm saying is the thing that we're experiencing in

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Speaker 1: New Zealand is being experienced by the entire world. So

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Speaker 1: could we actually what's the value in holding the line?

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Speaker 1: Can we hold the line? Do we become elite if

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Speaker 1: we do?

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Speaker 2: No, it's not about elitism. It's about making sure that

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Speaker 2: our young people have degrees and qualifications that fit them

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Speaker 2: for the world in the future. And we're seeing an

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Speaker 2: increasing number of the world is changing in terms of

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Speaker 2: educational post tertiary education. We're seeing more use of short qualifications,

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Speaker 2: more use of practical qualifications. We also need people who

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Speaker 2: are trained in the humanities, the social sciences and the

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Speaker 2: creative arts as well. We need to get the balance

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Speaker 2: right and we haven't had And this was the whole

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Speaker 2: point of why the strap the way the panel was

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Speaker 2: cool was created in the first place. We haven't had

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Speaker 2: a strategic look at the university system for over thirty

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Speaker 2: or forty years. We've paid a lot of time things

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Speaker 2: about the polytechniques. Both this administration and the last government

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Speaker 2: have put a lot of effort into that, but the universities,

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Speaker 2: which spend a large amount of unit of the government's

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Speaker 2: money and the core assets of the country needed to

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Speaker 2: be looked at from the point of view what do

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Speaker 2: we want to get from them? Peter?

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Speaker 1: On another subject altogether, do you have a view on

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Speaker 1: the Paris Agreement?

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Speaker 2: I have a view on climate change that we must

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Speaker 2: do our best well that community.

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Speaker 1: It's not the question. That's not the question at all.

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Speaker 1: With respect, Jeez, you didn't come on here to be grilled.

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Speaker 1: The question is not do we have a The question

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Speaker 1: is do you have a view on the Paris Agreement

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Speaker 1: as the mechanism to fight climate change?

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Speaker 2: Well, it's clearly in trouble. The multilateral system is clearly

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Speaker 2: in trouble. But the scientific community would say at the

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Speaker 2: moment it's the nearest thing we have to collective agreement

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Speaker 2: to make some progress, and in the absence of everything else,

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Speaker 2: it will only make it worse if we all fall

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Speaker 2: away from it.

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Speaker 1: Well, this is probably true as well, Peter. Thank you.

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Speaker 1: I always appreciate your expertise in and your giant brain.

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Speaker 1: That's sir. Peter Luckman, chair of the Advisory Group, wrote

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Speaker 1: report on the universities. For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive,

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Speaker 1: listen live to News Talks. It'd be from four pm weekdays,

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Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio