The number of jobs being cut will be more than 200 but less than 1000, Te Pūkenga's chief executive says. Photo: supplied
Te Pūkenga chief executive Peter Winder says the mega-institute will cut hundreds of jobs and sell some assets.
The organisation has taken over all polytechnics and most industry training organisations and has asked the government for $330 million from this year's Budget to pay for its transformation.
Winder told Nine to Noon today creating the institute would cost significantly less than original estimates of more than $400m, but would not provide an exact cost.
Te Pukenga CEO on challenges for the mega-polytechnic
He said Te Pūkenga would eventually make significant savings because the 24 different entities it had absorbed would not be recreating the same systems.
Winder said the institute had suffered a 10 percent drop in enrolments this year but expected to make a smaller deficit than last year.
He said it would cut hundreds of mostly managerial jobs.
"It's a number that will be more than 200 and less than a thousand, considerably less than a thousand," he said.
"The exact number depends on where we sit with vacancies and attrition and we're working through that at the moment. And our strong preference and the reason we've had a recruitment freeze for some time is to avoid redundancies."
Winder said Te Pūkenga would also sell assets and end some leases in order to rationalise property costs.
"If you think, for instance, about utilisation of some polytech campuses, buildings get used for between 11 and 30 percent of the time. Well, that's not a very effective use of capital. We need to change that," he said.
Asset sales would save $5m-$10m in the short term and bring much larger savings in future, he said.
Winder said creating Te Pūkenga was the right thing to do.
"I am absolutely convinced that the scale of what we are doing is right for New Zealand and that we can achieve the benefits that the government is seeking through this change," he said.
He said tertiary education was changing and people wanted more support for learning in their workplaces rather than in classrooms.
"It's at the core of Te Pūkenga, it's at the core of the shift in the funding the government has provided," he said.
Transforming the institute to its final state would take a long time because all its subsidiary organisations had to adopt the same technology and systems.
"Te Pūkenga began with 2500 different qualifications and programmes and we need to work through the unification of those because most of them are quite simply multiple variations of essentially the same thing which is horribly confusing for learners and very, very expensive in terms of the way we deliver it.
"So there's a whole piece of work that will take some years, to rationalise those programmes and qualifications," he said.
Winder said the institute also had to address large disparities in pay rates for staff at the former polytechnics and industry training organisations it had taken over.
Union vows to fight
The Tertiary Education Union said Winder's statements about job losses and a shift to work-based learning were shocking.
The union's national secretary, Sandra Grey, said the comments were a betrayal of teaching staff and failed to recognise the importance of face-to-face teaching.
"As late as last week, Peter Winder told me there were no surprises coming. What he's now suggesting is a betrayal of his teaching staff. Not only does he not value the work they do, but instead of telling them this directly he's done it through the media," she said.
"An almost exclusive focus on on-the-job training may suit some students, but it does not deliver the inclusivity or equity that Te Pūkenga is legally bound by the Education and Training Act to hold as core principles."
Grey said the union would fight for every job at Te Pūkenga.