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- First-year attrition
- The percentage of students starting a qualification in one year who have not completed or are not enrolled in the following year. Where first-year attrition rates are shown by level, it is the percentage who have not completed or further enrolled at that level.
- Direct higher progression
- The percentage of students completing a qualification who are enrolled in the following year in a higher-level qualification. A higher- level qualification means a qualification that is the next band up or higher, as presented in the data. Students who move to a higher-level qualification without completing a lower-level qualification are not included in this indicator.
- Counting students
- All student counts are for enrolments over the full academic year, unless otherwise stated. Students are counted on the basis of unique individuals. Where data is presented in categories, students are counted in each category they appear in during the year, such as level and field of qualification. This means the sum of the categories may exceed the total number of individuals.
- EFTS (Equivalent full-time student)
- EFTS is a unit for counting tertiary student numbers. The basis of EFTS is that a student taking a normal year’s full-time study counts as a 1.0 EFTS unit or the equivalent of 120 credits on the National Qualifications Framework. The courses taken by part-time students are proportions of 1.0 EFTS unit e.g. 0.75 EFTS.
- Formal student
- For the purposes of statistical reporting, a tertiary student is considered to be a formal student when enrolled at a tertiary education provider in a formal programme of study of more than one week’s full-time duration (i.e. an EFTS value greater than 0.03). The programme must lead to a qualification approved by an authorised certifying body or issued by an institution.
Data on formal students currently excludes on-job industry training (where there is no enrolment with an education provider) and students at PTEs that neither received tuition subsidies nor offered courses approved for student loans and/or allowances during the year (where the Ministry of Education does not collect full-year data).
- Index
- An index is a way of comparing two or more dissimilar sets of numbers over time. In some places in this report, completions and enrolments are indexed to the value of 100 in a given year to compare relative growth. In effect, the index shows how many completions and enrolments there would be in each of the following years, if there were exactly 100 completions and 100 enrolments in the reference year.
- Profiles analysis
- The analysis of profiles looked at the organisational objectives expressed in the 2005/07 and 2006/08 profiles of all TEIs and a random sample of 12 ITOs. Each objective was coded to one aspect of the TES and assessed as to whether it expressed an intent for change or maintenance of the status quo. Only change-focused objectives are counted in the analysis presented in this report.
This analysis is intended to provide a broad picture of strategic change in the tertiary education sector, from the perspective of governance and management. As such, several limitations of this analysis must be noted.
- Profiles are very much developing documents.
- Profiles reflect a governance and senior management perspective of the organisation. The fact that a profile is silent on an aspect of the TES does not necessary mean that the organisation is not contributing in that area.
- Profiles vary in the extent to which they fully reflect the activities of the organisation.
- The analysis is subject to the interpretation of the researcher of the statements made in the profile.
- It is difficult to judge from the profiles how much TEOs are representing existing strategies within the framework of the TES or are actively reshaping their strategies to respond to the TES.
- This analysis needs to be read in the context of other information presented in this report.
- Stakeholder research
- The stakeholder research was conducted by a research team based at Waikato Insitute of Technology, under contract to the Ministry of Education. The research focused on the engagement of business, industry, Māori and Pasifika communities with tertiary education providers. The research involved:
- analysis of the level of engagement with stakeholders expressed in 2005/07 profiles of tertiary education providers
- a follow-up survey with tertiary education providers to gain additional information
- focus groups with selected stakeholders.
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