NMIT programmes fare well under polytechs merger, leader says

Teaching and learning at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) have been “wholly unaffected” by turbulence at the top of mega polytechnic, Te Pūkenga, says its executive director.

At a business Q&A with prime minister Chris Hipkins in Nelson six weeks ago, a former NMIT board chair, Daryl Wehner, suggested sector reform was “tearing the heart out” of the institute.

Wehner, who left the board two years ago, declined to comment further to Stuff.

Last month Te Pūkenga CEO Peter Winder revealed between 200 and 1000 jobs could go across Te Pūkenga – which now runs the country’s 16 institutes of technology and polytechs and eight industry training organisations – in the face of the entity’s $63 million deficit. And a staff survey revealed low morale.

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NMIT executive director Olivia Hall said senior leadership roles at NMIT had become “very lean” in the face of job losses, which Winder said were largely expected to be managerial.

She was the only remaining member of NMIT’s executive team, which used to number around six plus a CEO, and the board had been disestablished.

While there still could be job losses at NMIT, there would be an opportunity to apply to new regional and national roles, which NMIT staff should ”be strong candidates for”, Hall said.

Hall believed uncertainty among staff about the impact of the merger – first mooted in 2019 –was a key driver of the staff survey finding that a third of Te Pūkenga employees saw no future at the entity.

Academic staff would soon get clarification about the impacts on their roles in the next round of consultation starting next month, she said.

“The length of time that this transition is taking, I can’t say our team [at NMIT] aren’t feeling it, and it isn’t tiring.

“But on the ground, we’ve seen a lot of really positive activity.”

NMIT continued to be invested in “heavily”, with nearly $7m of capital expenditure to spend this year on things like refurbishing its buildings and books, Hall said.

It could still determine how to spend its $11.2m of ringfenced cash reserves – with $1.7m assigned this year for projects in Nelson, Richmond and Marlborough, she said.

NMIT had received extra investment through Te Pūkenga, particularly for student well-being, including $113,000 this year from a partnership between Te Whatu Ora and Te Pūkenga “for mental health and targeted Pasifika Māori”.

The institute’s staff had worked hard to build local relationships –resulting in NMIT seeing only a 3 per cent drop in domestic EFTS (Equivalent Full-Time Student) enrolments last year on the year before, compared an average drop of 10% at Te Pūkenga, Hall said.

Domestic programme enrolments were up slightly (students could enrol in several programmes or part- time courses), with 3568 compared to 3420 last year, and 3473 before Covid, in 2019.

International programme enrolments rose to 147 in April, from 107 in April 2022.

Independent groups were now identifying which local industry needs to meet and how, helping NMIT “not be so insular in who we talk to”, Hall said.

One such group, Muka Tangata, held an event in Nelson last month as it worked to develop seafood processing programmes on the back of a half a million dollar Government cash injection for the region’s blue economy (the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth), Hall said.

With most of the seafood processing programmes within the sector, NMIT would be “greatly impacted”, she said.

Hall (Ngāti Rārua, Rangitane, Ngāti Kuia) started working at NMIT nine years ago as an academic staff member, then as curriculum manager and director Māori, before becoming an executive director in 2021.

This week she was appointed executive director of Te Pūkenga operations across the top of the South Island and lower North Island, with executive director at Whitireia and WelTec in Wellington, Mark Oldershaw.

Both were due to start the position – described as key in putting the partnership between the entity and Māori into action – on Monday.