F for fiasco: How I’d mark Victoria University’s leadership

OPINION: Many of Wellington’s tertiary students will be studying hard this week, aware that there are not many weeks until end-of-term assessments and exams.

Their lecturers will also be assessed – by superiors and students. They will also send details of their research to the PBRF (Performance Based Research Fund), which in 2019 had Victoria staff leading the pack of New Zealand universities.

But who assesses the senior leadership team at Victoria University? Given I have marked a few fourth-form maths exams in my time – including one our cat vomited on when I brought the exams home for the weekend – I will give it a go.

Branding 101: Coke Classic, Zespri, Pacifier. Be careful about changing your brand, as an ill-chosen new name can cause disaster. There was no groundswell for change when the senior leadership tried to change Victoria’s name to Wellington University. Alumni were appalled and donors threatened to cancel bequests. Students opposed it, staff were ambivalent and the only ones in support were nameless “stakeholders”. Education Minister Chris Hipkins vetoed the name change, yet the senior leadership team is rebranding by stealth, causing even more confusion. Grade: E

READ MORE:
* Victoria University scraps ‘power-grab’ restructure after staff and student backlash
* Students join staff kicking back against Victoria University’s restructure plan
* Strong community opposition expected over plans to demolish heritage-listed Gordon Wilson Flats

Ethics 101: The previous government sold Karori Teachers College to Victoria University for $1, as it was busily training teachers there. But when classes were moved to Kelburn Campus, the enterprising Vic senior leadership team saw the opportunity to flog the campus off to the highest private bidder. Forget that it was a government asset, forget that the Karori community used large parts of it, forget that some architectural historians thought its “brutalist” architecture should be preserved – it was demolished to become a retirement village. Technically legal, but ethically appalling. Grade D-

Pastoral Care 101: When I was evicted from parties at Vic House in the 1980s, student hostels were directly run by universities. According to my friends, the food wasn’t great, but the accommodation affordable. Now that the running of the hostels has been outsourced, the food is still not great, but student accommodation is becoming increasingly unaffordable. Along with complaints about drunkenness and sexual harassment in some of these hostels, there have been serious questions about the level of pastoral care provided. As for charging $150 a week to students who had to vacate their hostel rooms because of Covid-19 (later rescinded) – appalling. Grade C-.

Epidemiology 101 and Public Health 101: When the pandemic struck, we closed our borders. It was a great move from a public health standpoint, but disastrous for universities dependent on money from overseas students. Let foreign students in and we’ll take care of quarantine, said Victoria University’s leadership. If Victoria can’t manage a name change, do you really think it could have successfully handled the difficult task of quarantining hundreds of overseas students? Thankfully for Wellington, the state in Australia is the only Victoria with a big Covid problem.

Demolition 101: In 2012 the university bought the Gordon Wilson flats. The former state housing flats, which were heritage listed, were also deemed an earthquake risk. There are arguments for and against their heritage value, but Victoria’s plans do not include renovating or even replacing the flats with much-needed student accommodation. Among other things they plan a brand new spacious outdoor entrance. How often do you hear a Vic student saying, “What this university really needs is a spacious outdoor entrance”? Grade A+

Management 101: The PBRF results show that Vic staff are highly regarded. So why plan a massive restructure when there is no appetite for it from staff or students? Rather than use its biggest asset – students and staff – the senior management team embarked on the Whiria Project. This restructure, created with no consultation, would have put lower-level decision-making, budget and staffing decisions into the hands of – you guessed it – the senior leadership team. Job losses were not ruled out and there was little about student learning in the proposal. Was it a cost-cutting measure? Empire building? We’ll never know because it was flatly rejected by staff and students then promptly withdrawn by the leadership team. Grade: F for fiasco

Education 101: Despite the above failures, there are a lot of good things happening at Vic. Perhaps the leadership needs to focus more on education. For example, I was speaking to a recent graduate who said that, though they loved their time at Vic, they got sick of lectures attended by hundreds of students with a lecturer simply reading out lecture notes. Their younger sibling, studying at Massey, was involved in a far more hands-on course with frequent personal interaction with lecturers. Shouldn’t Vic’s leadership be looking at things like the quality of learning, rather than debating whether we should call departments “faculties” or “divisions”? Grade: C

Overall grade: You probably think I am going to award a fail. Wrong. To fail a student is probably to prevent them paying fees and enrolling in an expensive course next semester. They must pass at all costs. Grade: C pass