Does this apply to the university sector? Universities have a very high degree of institutional autonomy, which is a critical safeguard that protects academic freedom and research integrity. In return for this freedom, universities bear duties. Our ability to innovate and meet the needs of our society depends on nurturing the resources of the university sector wisely and well.

So it’s pretty important that those in charge of universities do their jobs well, and unless we assume they are both infallible and paragons of virtue, there needs to be accountability somewhere in the system. 

Holding universities accountable: the Commission and the councils

Who holds the universities to account? The current law provides for two main avenues of accountability: one via the universities’ annual reporting and funding agreements with the Tertiary Education Commission and the other via the council that each university is required to have. The law endows university councils with a lot of authority. Councils formally make or approve university decisions and internal policies (or delegate responsibility for them) on pretty much everything the university does as a corporate entity. Of course, the actual day to day running of a university is delegated to the Vice Chancellor, who is effectively the CEO. Councils have the critical responsibility of appointing the Vice Chancellor and holding that person to account for his or her management of the university.

This means it is a big deal who gets to be on the council and how they get to be there. What does the law say? Actually, not that much. The law says councils must have between 8 and 12 members, with 3 or 4 of these appointed by the minister. A few types of people are disqualified (undischarged bankrupts, for example) and a few types of people must be included: a student representative, two staff representatives (one academic, one non-academic) and at least one council member must be Māori. And there’s general language about needing to ensure representativeness, appropriate skills and experience, and ability to perform their duties as members.

Beyond that, the law basically leaves university councils to decide for themselves how they will operate. Section 279 of the Act says: ‘An institution’s council may make statutes relating to the appointment of members..’ Even the minister responsible for the universities needs to consult with the council before deciding on the 3 or 4 individuals he or she gets to appoint: Section 278(7) says that ‘Before making an appointment under this section, the Minister must seek, and consider, nominations from the relevant council.’

Council roles to be filled at the University of Auckland

So councils get to write their own statutes setting out how they appoint members. What do these statutes say? I’ll take the University of Auckland’s one as an example. Others may be different, but the University of Auckland is our country’s largest. It is also in the process of appointing four council members. And, because the current Vice Chancellor resigned only a few months after being reappointed by the current council, the council is tasked with the weighty responsibility of choosing a new Vice Chancellor over the coming months.

The council revised its procedures for appointing its own members three times in the last three years. Its 2023 statute sets out desirable qualities in council members and notes they can be appointed for a maximum of four years and a maximum of three times – so one could serve for up to 12 years. The statute says the Vice Chancellor is always a member of the council, by virtue of being Vice Chancellor. The statute also sets out the procedures for the election of staff and student representative members. There’s another document – made by the council – that gives a bit more detail on how exactly members get appointed or reappointed. This shows that the central role is played by something called the VCRERC – the Vice-Chancellor’s Review and Executive Remuneration Committee. This committee gets to specify what skills and experience members should have, before a call for expressions of interest in joining the council is made. The VCRERC also gets to view these expressions of interest and draw up a shortlist, to present to council, along with its recommendation. 

The powerholders answerable to.. themselves

Who is on the VCRERC? It is a committee of the council itself and comprises just four people: the Chancellor, who chairs the council, the pro-chancellor (effectively the deputy) and chairs of the council committees for finance and audit.

A look at its responsibilities shows that the VCRERC really is the centre of power on the council. As well as reviewing and recommending appointments or reappointments of council members, it also has the responsibility of ‘Reviewing and managing the performance, composition and succession of Council.’

What all this boils down to is that the council, the body charged with holding the university’s paramount manager, the Vice Chancellor, to account: a) includes the Vice Chancellor; b) determines for itself how it will operate; c) appoints and reappoints itself (with the exception of the 3 elected members and the minister’s appointees – but it gets to nominate ministerial appointees; d) reviews its own performance.

Managing conflicts of interest

All pretty cosy. There’s a cute provision for managing conflicts of interest in the appointment of council members: ‘If any member of VCRERC is a candidate for appointment as a Council member, that VCRERC member will not be present or participate in any part of the appointments process for the relevant position including the receipt and consideration of expressions of interest.’ So (for example), when considering the expressions of interest in positions that are currently vacant or up for reappointment, should the current Chancellor wish to be reappointed as the alumni member, she will excuse herself as a member of the VCRERC, which she has led since 2021, while the rest of the committee considers any competing expressions of interest received for the alumni role she currently fills on council. No problem at all.

Another quirk of the council appointments process is that the council’s appointments statute stipulates that the university’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Māori), a member of the university’s executive team, ‘is to be invited to attend meetings of the VCRERC to assist the VCRERC… when the appointment of a Māori member is being considered.’ So the council member with particular responsibility for monitoring the university’s performance with respect to Māori interests – performance which is led by the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Māori) – is appointed on the advice of that same Pro Vice-Chancellor. Taken together, we may not have a chumocracy, but we surely have a system vulnerable to chumocracy and all the risks associated with it. Of course, everyone may be doing their job honourably and competently. Nothing I have written here suggests otherwise. But it’s a system that bears some similarities to what historian Peter Hennessy calls the ‘good chaps’ theory of British government. That’s a system that depends on everyone being a self-restrained good chap – which is to say, a system that is vulnerable to decay and capture.

Photo by Roberto Carlos Román Don on Unsplash

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Co-authors are Emeritus Professor Robert Nola, Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger, and Professor Garth Cooper

Many New Zealanders were startled to hear of the government’s He Puapua plan for iwi co-governance of the nation by 2040. The July 2021 publication of the document, ‘Te Pūtahitangi, A Tiriti-led Science-Policy approach for Aotearoa New Zealand’ reveals one of the strategies for He Puapua’s implementation.  Stating that “the call for a Tiriti-led science-policy approach is timely”, Te Pūtahitangi, supported by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, will insert mātauranga Maori into all areas of science, including the school and university currricula, research funding and science policy. With the same speed as the other He Puapua ‘reforms’ the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment is already proceeding with the Future Pathways Te Ara Paerangi Green Paper to establish the “tiriti-led system” advocated by Te Pūtahitangi .

According to Te Pūtahitanga “Mātauranga Māori is the Māori knowledge ecosystem underpinned by kaupapa and tikanga Māori”. Tikanga is defined as “the customary system of values and practices that have developed over time and continue to evolve and are deeply embedded in the social context”. The document distinguishes mātauranga Māori from science in its reference to “Aotearoa’s rich knowledge systems – Western science and Mātauranga Māori”.

Te Pūtahitangi contains two foundational errors. The first is the premise of an ‘equivalence’, or ‘ōrite’ between the traditional beliefs and practices and modern science. While traditional beliefs and practices are valued for many reasons, such understandings – as many leading Māori intellectuals insist – are not science.

Science provides naturalistic explanations for physical and social phenomena. In contrast traditional thought employs supernatural explanations for such phenomena with the proto-science (or pre-scientific) knowledge acquired from observation and experience providing ways to live in the environment. This includes the knowledge which enables ocean navigation by the stars and currents, efficacious medicines from plants, and social structures based on kinship relations and birth status.

Methods differ too. Science requires doubt, challenge and critique, forever truth-seeking but with truth never fully settled. In contrast traditional understandings require respect, even reverence from adherents. Change to tikanga comes from changes to the social context within which, as Te Pūtahitangi notes, tikanga is “deeply embedded”. Indeed it is that context which ties the beliefs and practices to a specific people and their ancestral traditions. Science is not constrained in these ways. It develops from the systematic criticism and refutation of its ideas. 

A second error in the Te Pūtahitanga document follows from the knowledge ‘equivalence’ error. This is the false characterisation of science as ‘Western’. But science rejects the authority of culture, and accepts only argument and evidence. It is universal, a fact shown by its rich history. ‘Zero’[MU1] , for example, was used first in Mesopotamia and India and discovered independently by the Mayans. Science belongs neither to the ‘West’ nor to any ethnic group.

As educators we are committed to the success of our Māori students. As scientists we know that equating mātauranga Māori with science will not produce this success. The academic education which does prepare young people for university is the study of mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, languages, literature, history, geography, and the arts. In acquiring understanding of the knowledge which belongs to all humanity young people also acquire the critical thinking required for democratic citizenship.

The aim of Pūtahitanga is to connect mātauranga Māori and science for use in policy. Science can inform policy as we see with Covid-19 and global warming. But policy informing science is a recipe for misinformation and the loss of scientific integrity, something seen in Stalinist biology, Nazi physics and Christian creationism.

Just as He Puapua proposes radical changes to New Zealand’s constitutional governance, so do Te Pūtahitangi’s proposals signal radical change to the relationship of science and policy along with all areas of education. This is a matter requiring robust discussion without fear or favour.

The header image for this article was taken from Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/Bt9y47d1e6k).

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