23 April 2004 Graduation Address by Lincoln University's Vice-Chancellor Professor Roger Field

Attached is the full version of the Graduation Address by Lincoln University's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Roger Field, delivered in Christchurch Town Hall on Friday 23 April.

Key points include –

• Universities face significant current challenges and changes. Many of the short term agendas have a focus on trying to position universities as education business enterprises without acknowledging the context of centuries of tradition and an independence that goes with the responsibilities of "academic freedom" and being the "critic and conscience of society".

• I have no problem with the requirement to manage Lincoln University as a prudent business or continuing to ensure that the quality of our graduates continues to be at the highest level. What I do find unreasonable is an excessive steering of the University's direction by external agencies and the increasingly high cost of compliance and monitoring that add little to the quality of the educational experience of students.

• Lincoln University has used a range of measurement techniques to determine academic quality. …all reveal positive outcomes, as do the evaluations of employers of the University's graduates, who value qualifications linked to industry needs.

• Lincoln University has a proud record in academic research, which is typically focused on relevance to industry needs and applied to current problems and issues. This is the case in most disciplinary areas and characterises a great deal of the Lincoln University contribution to the research needs of the New Zealand economy. This is not to suggest that there is no involvement in basic, pure research but the emphasis at Lincoln University is definitely applied. It is this emphasis that has informed agriculture for over a hundred years and the current broader needs in biotechnology, economics, commerce, environmental science, resource management, landscape architecture, recreation management, tourism, the social sciences and many other disciplines.

• In the past New Zealand has held a number of reasonably public, and at times poorly informed, debates about tertiary education, about the significance of what a university education really means and how New Zealand university education compares internationally.

• New Zealand faces a number of dilemmas on how to fund essential social services, including education, and more specifically the universities.

• The acceptability of Lincoln University graduates both in New Zealand and overseas is well established and should not be challenged by simplistic analysis. A more substantial attempt to resource New Zealand universities at a level that is commensurate with our current performance, and recognition globally, should be the real priority.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand