Grant Robertson told the Otago Daily Times yesterday the university was in a "good position" with upcoming enrolment numbers, but he worried about the government funding model, which he said was "unsustainable".
"The per student funding model, I think, needs a really close look at. It goes all the way back 30-odd years and it’s really just been incrementally played around with.
"Most recently in the Budget, we saw that the government upped the funding for the Stem [science, technology, engineering, mathematics] subjects and reduced the funding for humanities and social sciences.
"I think that kind of winners and losers approach doesn’t work for us."
Over the past two years, the university increased its fees by the maximum allowable 6% rate.
"I would like to see universities funded over longer periods."
At the moment it was once every year or every two years.
"Five-yearly funding ... would be a great way that we could have more certainty about what we were doing."
Mr Robertson said he would like to see encouragement
of more collaboration between universities.
"The sort of annualised bums-on-seats model — I don’t think facilitates the best for New Zealand’s tertiary education system."
The university should still be meeting milestones "but providing a lot more certainty about funding would significantly improve all of our prospects".
The university’s international strategy would "start to bear fruit" this year.
"That’s got a real focus on some particular markets.
"I think the numbers we’re starting to see come through there are really positive.
"So if you’re attracting students from India, it’s a different prospect than attracting them from Vietnam and so you need to utilise the people who make that work and have the focused kind of advertising and approach."
Last year, the university put on hold two of its major arts scholarships — Frances Hodgkins Fellow for arts and the Mozart Fellow for music — due to the funding climate.
Mr Robertson was confident the scholarships could be revived for 2027.
"That pause was really to do with the fact that obviously they are endowed funds.
"We rely on the interest that we get from those funds. Sometimes the costs vary a little year to year.
"But we’ve had a lot of interest from people who want to continue to support those fellowships and I’m very optimistic about their future."
The whole postgraduate market needed looking at, he said.
The university would also complete one of its biggest infrastructure projects outside of Dunedin — in the Christchurch campus health science complex — later this year, he said.
There was "constant reviewing" of Otago University papers and programmes as well as advocating for more medical school positions.
"We do a huge amount of the most basic and important research that the country relies on to develop ideas into products and to understand the world around us. All of that’s at risk if we don’t fund it properly."
