Re Joyce! We’re outa here!
Martin Doyle
BASTILLE Day always brings out the best.
On 14 July 1789, a mob “stormed the Bastille” in Paris. The Bastille was an old prison and all the prisoners inside were liberated. This has gone down in history as one of the great symbols of the French Revolution, expressing a sense of overthrowing past shackles and “liberation” of human potential. It’s a nice story. However, academics who study this type of thing have made a few wee corrections to the story.
The Bastille was an old heap (built in 1370). And it certainly wasn’t some kind of Paremoremo when it came to the number of inmates. It held seven prisoners: your usual swindlers, religious free-thinkers and a journalist. But while these seven individuals were no doubt delighted to be granted early release, it would be too much to say the crowd had come to seek parole for them. In truth, the crowd stormed the Bastille to get the guns and gun-powder known to be stored there. The well-being of the poor inmates of this stinking bastion of archaic ideologies was only an afterthought.
That’s why on Bastille Day last week, I think everyone in Wellington would have been inspired when Hon Steven Joyce, the Minister of Tertiary Education, stormed the Ivory Tower of Victoria University, with the interests of the students as his priority. He delivered a potentially revolutionary oration to the assembled masses about what he wants to see changing round the place in the next few years. I say “revolutionary” because he fired off a few ideas that could greatly help Wellington, and certainly “free” many students from their worst dread: not having a job when they get out at the end of their degrees.
Joyce reached his climax with these words: “Ultimately, I want to see funding linked to employment outcomes, not just internal benchmarks. This will send a strong signal to students about which qualifications and which institutions offer the best career prospects - and that’s what tertiary education has got to be about.”
The so-called “Brain Drain” whereby New Zealand has for decades lost its graduates to other countries long ago broadened to include all sectors of the workforce. The “drain” is now a flood of humanity. We currently lose 60,000 Kiwis permanently every year to overseas. It signals “all is not well in Paradise”. That’s why Wellington has provided the country with wonderful leadership in recent years by celebrating our graduates with street parades and ceremonies in the Michael Fowler Centre. We are truly proud of our students.
But having graduated, it’s time to start paying back their massive ball-and-chain student loans. If they can’t get employment here, working out their next step isn’t rocket science: “Aussie, here I come! (or wherever)”. However, if more jobs (or better mechanisms to link students to jobs), can be created, then the huge oil slick of black gowns currently leaking off our shores might at last be capped.
On 14 July 1789, a mob “stormed the Bastille” in Paris. The Bastille was an old prison and all the prisoners inside were liberated. This has gone down in history as one of the great symbols of the French Revolution, expressing a sense of overthrowing past shackles and “liberation” of human potential. It’s a nice story. However, academics who study this type of thing have made a few wee corrections to the story.
The Bastille was an old heap (built in 1370). And it certainly wasn’t some kind of Paremoremo when it came to the number of inmates. It held seven prisoners: your usual swindlers, religious free-thinkers and a journalist. But while these seven individuals were no doubt delighted to be granted early release, it would be too much to say the crowd had come to seek parole for them. In truth, the crowd stormed the Bastille to get the guns and gun-powder known to be stored there. The well-being of the poor inmates of this stinking bastion of archaic ideologies was only an afterthought.
That’s why on Bastille Day last week, I think everyone in Wellington would have been inspired when Hon Steven Joyce, the Minister of Tertiary Education, stormed the Ivory Tower of Victoria University, with the interests of the students as his priority. He delivered a potentially revolutionary oration to the assembled masses about what he wants to see changing round the place in the next few years. I say “revolutionary” because he fired off a few ideas that could greatly help Wellington, and certainly “free” many students from their worst dread: not having a job when they get out at the end of their degrees.
Joyce reached his climax with these words: “Ultimately, I want to see funding linked to employment outcomes, not just internal benchmarks. This will send a strong signal to students about which qualifications and which institutions offer the best career prospects - and that’s what tertiary education has got to be about.”
The so-called “Brain Drain” whereby New Zealand has for decades lost its graduates to other countries long ago broadened to include all sectors of the workforce. The “drain” is now a flood of humanity. We currently lose 60,000 Kiwis permanently every year to overseas. It signals “all is not well in Paradise”. That’s why Wellington has provided the country with wonderful leadership in recent years by celebrating our graduates with street parades and ceremonies in the Michael Fowler Centre. We are truly proud of our students.
But having graduated, it’s time to start paying back their massive ball-and-chain student loans. If they can’t get employment here, working out their next step isn’t rocket science: “Aussie, here I come! (or wherever)”. However, if more jobs (or better mechanisms to link students to jobs), can be created, then the huge oil slick of black gowns currently leaking off our shores might at last be capped.
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