Unitec DVA Students against staff redundancies

All the very best in your campaigner to retain skilled professional staff who are not only great academics but closely in touch with industry developments.

I'm a recent Bachelor of Visual Arts graduate of the Dunedin Polytech Art School and I'm pretty fed up with how this current government is doing its utmost to turn tertiary arts education in N.Z. into a sham.

Please reconsider your decision.

Unitec Visual Art 2001 graduate standing with staff

These programmes are the cornerstone of the university's reputation. Not just students will suffer. In the long run Unitec will.

I am extremely concerned about the path your organisation is planning and hopefully not implementing with regard to the Design and Visual Arts department and the unfortunate utterances of your South African executive dean. What you are planning smacks of elitist pandering to the so-called 'professors' (a ridiculous phrase and deliberately obfuscatory I suggest) of industry. Industry want one thing—what suits them at the time. Even the professional bodies are not to be relied on for long-term critical direction. Consult them by all means but don't take direction from them at the risk of losing your integrity as a teaching organisation with wide vision and leadership. You should be respecting your teachers and their professional knowledge. They may not have the public relations 'face' to deal with what are often self-important professional bodies but they do have a great deal of training and the ability to oversee industry trends and think robustly of their student's needs. These needs are wider than the trends of the moment or decade. They are concerned with with life-long learning and development of critical faculties to serve the broad community of this country. The wishful thinking that Mr De Wet Fourie is publicly expounding is based no doubt on fiscal concerns. There is, I believe $78 m of Tertiary funding waiting for spending. To suggest that department managers should co-ordinate 'teachers' from industry and that they fund-raise or find sponsorship for your organisation from industry is a most unfortunate tack. Do you seriously think industry 'professors' (to use De Wet Fourie's term) have the teaching nous, the pedagogical skills, the commitment to the nitty gritty of everyday schooling that your current teachers have. I doubt it. Industry, I repeat, is interested ultimately in its own aggrandisement and profit and you, I expect, when you are honest with yourself, may consider this a fair analysis. Please re-consider this potentially drastic move which is

Seems like they're using 'real learning' as another word for austerity at the expense of students, completely stupid.

This is disgraceful. Staff have trained industry leaders

This looks like totally unwise casualisation of employment conditions and the ruination of a vigorous programme of study to the great dtriment of current students.

The students need qualified experienced teachers. They deserve the chance to be educated I under the best circumstances that you can provide.

This is crazy. My time studying photography was truly inspiring! Id haate for that ispiration to be lost

this is unbelievable. I was a design student here and had the best lecturers there how can you do this?

bloody ridulous

Graphic Design Students Stand With Staff

Graphic Design students stand with staff!!

I support the students at Unitec to vomplete their degree with their current tutors

An amazing bunch of teachers and tutors, with an incredible wealth of knowledge in their field and the INDUSTRY have just been made redundant. How is this supposed to benefit the students again?

A sad day for art education in New Zealand. I wish the current students good luck because they are not going to get any educational value, particularly as the new system will probably take 2 years to sort out before they see the mistakes and change it all back. It's an absolute joke when the top people seem not to have anything other than dollars as the bottom line. Remember the fish rots from the head!!!!!

It is vitally the current students are able to complete their degrees and most preferably with their current tutors

I support the students of the art and design departments at Unitec in their desire for their degree teaching being consistent, professional, supportive, and without the stress that students in similar situations have experienced. Having gone through a similar situation and seeing the results to students' final work a year or two later, I feel that the stress it puts the smaller body of staff under, and the tumult the students experience, is reflected in the students' output and quality of work from that point on. It is detrimental to their ability to study further (B or B+ needed for honours or masters at other establishments. That is a moderated B/B+). Unitec's design department is unique: it is unusual and unusually supportive of the students it attracts, some of whom would not easily get into or fit into, let alone afford, the other, over-subscribed, courses in Auckland. There are aspects taught at Unitec which are not taught elsewhere and this uniquely suits students of the area. The staff are adaptable and involved. There are courses or combinations of methods and disciplines that are not offered elsewhere. The extreme size of the cut will reduce this to a tiny department and that will set the department up for failure. The proposed structure is a 'paper-structure'. On paper it seems to answer to fiscal demands (especially because lecture theatre-based ratios are usually proposed in reconstruction). But the solutions it proposes… 'industry'; what is it? These teachers from 'industry'… who are they? People in industry are rarely teachers/lecturers. They are not trained as such, do not have certificates and diplomas in tertiary teaching (extensive courses), nor the teaching history to manage and draw out the potential of young people in education; definitely do not have the theoretical background to manage or collaborate in degree-level teaching. They do not have long-term programme or curriculum experience. Course components are carefully dovetailed to bui