Friday, March 29, 2024

Uni sparks education overhaul

Neal Wallace
An overhaul of tertiary agricultural education and training looks like an unintended consequence of efforts by Lincoln University to balance its books and grow its roll.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

THE 2011 merger of Telford Rural Polytechnic and Lincoln University was supposed to fix problems facing both institutions.

Telford had successfully delivered levels 1 to 5 tertiary courses from its south Otago farm campus to between 1300 and 1500 effective full time students (EFTS) a year, from which it built up $10.6 million in cash reserves.

But the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) ruled it had to stop delivering levels 1 and 2 courses, a move the council concluded would halve its roll and turn what had been successive profits in to deficits.

At the same time Lincoln was struggling financially and searching for ways to increase its roll and, after a brief search, the two councils decided a merger was a logical fit.

The rationale was that Telford and Lincoln were agricultural educators and Telford was a small polytechnic with Lincoln a small university so merging would create mutually beneficial critical mass.

Lincoln also hoped the connection would encourage students to progress from Telford’s certificate courses to degree or higher levels of university education.

The university had been hampered for some years under the pressure of being a small, specialist institution of about 2500 EFTS from which it had to fund its running costs.

It tried to address its position by chasing student growth and adding non-land based courses such as law, business and philosophy while also chasing the international student market.

That it did successfully to the point where 52% of its student base was international.

But it meant Lincoln had moved away from its core role of supporting the primary sector.

Lincoln embarked on two rounds of restructuring, cutting more than 100 jobs and unpopular courses in a bid to right flagging fortunes and address successive multi-million dollar deficits.

Ten years ago the first of two events shook it to its core and made its vulnerable position even more parlous.

The global financial crisis turned off the international student market tap then just weeks after the merger with Telford the second Christchurch earthquake struck, severely damaging the campus.

As part of the merger the respective financial accounts were combined but there was an undertaking all or most of the $10.6m cash from Telford would be spent at Telford.

But after the earthquake it was invested in the rebuild of science facilities at the university, sources said.

However, those sources acknowledged the money came from education and should be spent on education.

Fast forward to 2016 and Lincoln remains in financial difficulty, prompting a review of all aspects of its business including consideration of asset sales and getting rid of Telford.

Not all of Lincoln University’s 14 farms or plots of land are used for research or tied up in trusts and could potentially be sold.

Vice-chancellor Robin Pollard has said asset sales were an option and its website revealed it owned farms covering 4307ha from Manawatu to Wanaka.

Pollard described Lincoln’s asset base as complex and said any decision to sell assets was for the council to make and none had been made.

The farms ranged in size from 10ha to 2127ha and of the 14, seven were used for research and training, three were leased to other parties, three were held in trust for the university and one was leased by the university.

The research and teaching farms were close to the campus and include two dairy farms, the Ashley Dene Farm, the Johnson Memorial Lab Research Farm, Iverson Field, the Horticulture Research Area and the organic property, the Biological Husbandry Unit.

Two leased properties were a 125ha cropping farm to Crop and Food Research and half a 35ha organic farm to a neighbour and half for the university dairy research farm.

The third, a 92ha property at Rangitata, was leased to two neighbours.

Properties held in trust were the 2127ha Mt Grand high-country station near Wanaka, with proceeds used to fund a post-graduate scholarship and Argyle, a 433ha dryland sheep and beef farm in Marlborough that was subleased with proceeds used to fund undergraduate scholarships.

The third property held in trust was Westoe Farm, a 400ha lamb and beef finishing property in Rangitikei District.

It was owned by the Lincoln-Westoe Trust and, according to the Lincoln website, was being developed as a North Island demonstration farm.

The university leased a 418ha dryland farm at Hororata that was in the first tranche of land to receive water from the Central Plains Irrigation scheme.

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