Teacher Training at Otago

The TEU have drawn attention to Otago University’s plans to cut the number of teacher educators. This move isn’t necessarily because they don’t like teacher educators. I think it’s to do with the fact that the research that is relevant for teacher educators isn’t considered to be “real research” by the government that attracts PBRF funding. So, when it comes to wire over funding, the departments that don’t generate as much PBRF government income are the first to be targeted for budget cuts. I suspect if teacher colleges knew this sort of thing was going to happen they would have held out against the trend of becoming part of universities for a lot longer.

I recall (earlier post here) that the Education faculty at the University of Canterbury was at risk of being ”fined”  if they did not attract enought PBRF funding for the university.

UPDATE: Have altered the wording of this post slightly, to reflect that it is government policy that decides which research counts towards PBRF.

PBRF stick at UC

From what I can gather, every staff member hates the Performance Based Research Fund. The PBRF is a contestable government fund. The more researchers of certain qualities at an institution, the more funding it gets. I think it is yet another example of Goodhart’s Law. The University of Canterbury is now instituting a $40000 fine for colleges not having enough recognised researchers under this scheme. I do wonder how this will affect the recently merged college of Education, given that its primary function is teacher education and not research.

The PBRF is a bit of an anomoly. One of the reasons why the funding model was shifted away from bums on seats was because the universities and other tertiary institutions would spend a lot of money on recruitment to compete for students. The PBRF has the same thing going on, but researchers on seats instead.