A New Zealand Approach to PhD Recruitment: Will the Bradley Review Take Notice. (August 4, 2008)

While Emeritus Professor Denise Bradley and her team of three are working up their review of higher education -- they have been charged to produce a report on priority action by the end of October 2008, and the final report by the end of the year -- one of the matters that ought to be of interest to them is the initiative that has been taken across the Tasman by Helen Clark's New Zealand government.

In 2006 New Zealand undertook to treat foreign PhD candidates comparably to New Zealand students. So, for example, average fees for international students ordinarily are about NZ$25,000 compared with $NZ5000 for domestic PhD students. However, as Andrew Trounson reported in last Wednesday's Australian Higher Education Supplement, when foreign student fees were lowered to parity: "in the first year of the changes international PhD enrolments in New Zealand jumped by 56 per cent from 693 to 1084 students. And in 2007 enrolments rose by a further 40 per cent."

It's true the New Zealand universities have taken a financial hit but they along with the government expect "a research rewards program for the successful completion of PhDs" will offset the initial losses, "and the sector is expected to benefit from a resulting boost in research output and rankings". Of course there is the hope the newly minted PhDs will stick around and boost the country's research productivity.

You might say they are looking beyond the fringe of the carpet.

Brett Parker, a senior policy analyst with the NZ Ministry of Education has been in Melbourne closeted with Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology administrators briefing them on methods and results to date. His upbeat assessment according to Mr Trounson is that so far: "Completion rates for international students are higher than for domestic students: 65 per cent compared with about 45 per cent. If that completion rate were maintained, Mr Parker said the funding rewards would leave universities 15 per cent ahead. Completion rates more in line with domestic students would mean universities would be only slightly behind."

So heads they win tails they hardly loose.

Whether or not Professor Bradley's review pays heed and if so what the government's response will be is unlikely to be evident until the May 2009 Budget. By then the first term of the Rudd government will be half gone.

In any case the hot breath of competition for the world's best and brightest isn't going to get any less combative, threat of world recession or no.