Right from our first interaction with education we are taught about team work.  It is one of the earliest and most hard won lessons. It takes some kids longer than others. Some kids never learn.

Some kids learn but in adulthood forget what their pretty and patient young kindergarten teacher so lovingly taught them. If we think of the main players in the New Zealand tertiary education sector like a playground, all the usual kinds of kids are there.

There are the big kids – they have lots of clout, they shout the loudest. They steal everyone else’s toys. There are the kids that like maths, the kids that like music, the kids that like science, the kids that like to play house. Then there are the kids to whom anything is a magic wand. These kids like to explore, use their hands, take risks, learn new things. These kids are the polytechnics. Some kids like to read. Some kids like to do.

The polytechnics like to do, and the six largest New Zealand polytechnics are definitely doing something big. They broke away from the other 14 New Zealand polytechnics earlier this year and banded together to form the Metro Group. They are deep in uncharted territory. Collaboration County. Leadership Land.

The Metro Group’s ambitious plans are to change the mechanics of this country’s tertiary education sector and to play a more integral role in modernising the economy through a focus on innovation, technology, and higher level learning. They also plan on reducing the number of qualifications offered across their institutions by 25 per cent by 2012, thus decreasing back office costs and allowing for content streamlining.

Linda Sissons of WelTec, Mark Flowers of Wintec, Rick Ede of Unitec, Peter Brothers of the Manukau Institute of Technology, Neil Barns of the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, and Phil Ker of Otago Polytechnic are the six CEOs on a mission. The Metro Group’s first initiative, the pilot, the testing of the collaborative waters, is the Bachelor of Engineering Technology – a common degree shared among all Metro Group member polytechnics.

It is a bit of a diversion from the out-wit, out-smart, out-educate mindset seen in the wider sector, which the six CEOs agree largely results in money being spent
unproductively.

“There was a lot of money spent on the competition and not a lot of purpose,” Flowers says.

Long hours have gone into crafting this new course. 2010 is the inaugural year with 2000 students enrolled across the six Metro Group members. The structure of the degree plays to the strengths of individual institutions in the civil, mechanical, and electrical majors and sub majors rather than every polytechnic replicating every major within their own institution.

A common first year is offered at all institutions and students will then move according to the area in which they choose to specialise. For the polytechnics it means greater efficiencies. For business it means a higher standard of graduates with a more specialised knowledge. For the wider tertiary sector it means an exciting new business model for education.

The creation of the Bachelor of Engineering Technology was spurred by the results of career research and mapping carried out by the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand. Rick Ede says it was a natural progression of the polytechnic model of working closely with industry.

“There was just the perfect opportunity there to say, ‘hey look we can come together and package up a national qualification that goes directly into this career structure framework of the industry. It wasn’t easy developing the choices, but it is an awful lot easier when you know exactly what the industry really needs,” he says.

It’s textbook management practice in action. They are walking the walk and so far – it is early days yet – it seems to be paying off.

 “For business – I think they should have a high expectation of what institutes of technology do, we are supposed to be modernising this economy,” Flowers says.

“You know as well as I do the pace that technology is showing. So the real benefit should be if the six of us can get our act together and really get focused and make a difference. And if we don’t then we bloody well ought to be.

It’s like the old sayings go – no polytechnic is an island. You can lead a man to university but you cannot make him think.

Flowers says the Metro Group’s model considers both the employer and the student as customers of the service of education.

“Business is the customer, you will find all tertiary institutes say ‘oh the student is the customer’ but I believe the employers are just as important,” he says.

 “Whereas if I was sitting in a university I’m not sure that I would be saying it quite as insistently as that, and that is a connection I would like to make and I think my colleagues would all agree.”

By placing business as the end customer of the process they are ensuring employers get graduates that can hit the ground running, promptly add value to the business, innovate, and create breakthroughs. Chief Executive of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Limited (GNS) Dr Alex Malahoff agrees.

“They have the right desire, the attitude, the right training for specific areas,” he says.

“New Zealand is such a tiny country, in order to make use of all available avenues to get as intense a degree as possible, you might as well make use of your colleagues and make use of the other institutions. All the institutions realise that of course you compete for students and all of that but in the end if you get the right facilities and the right really special talent you can help make the degree a better one.”

The Metro Group initiative is a diversion from the decade of ups, downs, and identity crisis the polytechnics and the wider tertiary education sector has seen. Courses in twilight golf, incidents of bail out funding and appointments of crown managers at several institutions have, according to Ede, tainted the whole sector with the same brush.

The Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill, currently before Parliament, riled up the sector earlier last year by tabling a reduction in the size of polytechnic councils and giving the Minister for Tertiary Education the right to appoint the chair and deputy chair of those councils.  Unitec, under Ede’s 18-month leadership recently dropped their 10-year-bid to become a university. He says New Zealand needs to recognise that polytechnics and universities are different but equally valuable.

Flowers agrees, “Personally I just see it as two parallel systems with a slightly different emphasis, it shouldn’t be seen as superior – they are just different.”

 The tertiary education sector has been in a constant state of flux. The Metro Group leaders say in particular, the growing importance of the international student market and the increases in entry-level qualifications have kept them busy over the years. Where previously a certificate or diploma would have been sufficient for an entry level position a degree is now the norm – due largely to the increased role of technology at work.

 “Look at nursing – nurses used to do a diploma, now they do a degree,” Ede says. “Radiographers – they used to do a diploma and now if you want to specialise in ultrasound or MRI you need a postgraduate qualification. Over time it’s been a gradual shift.”

The international student market is a lucrative one, and one largely dominated by universities and private providers like language schools – the polytechnics now want in on more of the action. WelTec’s Linda Sissons says one goal of the six institutions banding together is to present a united front to the international market.

“Other countries and other agencies would much rather work with a consortium of providers than with one after another,” she says.

Some have already made more progress than others; Mark Flowers spoke to IN-Business at Auckland Airport before he flew out to Beijing on a 10-day trip to cement current relationships and look into new projects.

Sissons reiterates collaboration is the key to their success in Asia.

 “We won’t succeed unless we go out together, go out as metros united or New Zealand united, not one by one,” she says.