In 2016 and 2017 that uncertainty was for students wanting to attend Telford in South Otago, which Lincoln University was trying to off-load.
But before Christmas the devastating news broke that Taratahi, which in mid-2017 had taken over Telford, has been placed in the hands of liquidators.
It leaves hundreds of students and staff facing uncertain futures, along with a gaping hole in the supply of desperately needed skilled farm workers.
This is further evidence that the present funding model for sub degree agricultural training is not working and a model is needed that differs from other vocational training institutions.
They, too, have had issues. Last year the Government spent $100m bailing out Unitec, Whitireia and Tai Poutini polytechnics.
By its very nature educating primary sector students is more expensive and intensive than other vocational courses.
It requires students to live on working farms, to be given a student-centric education – you can’t teach fencing on a blackboard – and it comes with high compliance and pastoral care costs. Taratahi had a ratio of one staff member to 10 students.
But it appears to have finally succumbed to the millennial factor.
Fewer young people are choosing farming as a career, while numbers of potential students have shrunk because of successive years of low unemployment allowing those who would normally seek training to go directly in to work.
Telford and Taratahi have struggled to grow their rolls in recent years and are required to repay the Tertiary Education Commission $10 million for being funded for more students than were enrolled.
Not dismissing the obvious distress to students and staff, collapsing on the eve of Taratahi’s centenary adds to the misery.
But its centennial legacy, from what can best be described as an educational train wreck, is that Government and education officials can no longer ignore the essential issue of creating a sustainable sub-degree funding and administrative model for primary sector education.
Neal Wallace
