German will be offered to University of Otago students online next year as the university pilots a collaborative teaching model with Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.
The pilot will see Victoria lead the delivery of teaching German for students at both universities and Otago lead teaching of Latin and Greek at both universities.
It is hoped, if successful, the model might inform the government’s university sector review, as it could offer a way to achieve economies of scale across the financially challenged sector.
Under the pilot, students will enrol at their own home university, which will continue to provide them with pastoral care, course advice and student support services.
All teaching will be provided online.
Otago University decided this year to cut German amid what it said were declining rolls and funding difficulties.
The Tertiary Education Union yesterday called the new arrangement "bittersweet", as it did not save jobs lost in the restructuring.
Organiser Phil Edwards said the union was made aware of the new proposed arrangement some time ago.
"While it’s nice to see German still being available at the university, it would have been nicer to see the provision untouched.
"Good staff have been lost."
Mr Edwards said the funding model as prescribed by the Tertiary Education Commission did not seem to work well for humanities subjects.
"The [commission] doesn’t seem to value humanities, it seems to fund them in a different way."
From 2013 to last year, the number of students taking German as a major at the University of Otago decreased from nine equivalent full-time students to 1.1 — a reduction of 88.3%.
The German department had been the victim of previous restructuring to the point it had become "low-hanging fruit", Mr Edwards said.
University of Otago acting vice-chancellor Prof Helen Nicholson said the university was relishing the opportunity to work closely with Victoria.
She said the focus was on the collaboration for languages at present, but that did not rule out opportunities to have similar arrangements for other courses in the future.
Victoria vice-chancellor Prof Nic Smith said the pilot was an exciting prospect.
"This kind of collaborative approach, with the two universities contributing their individual distinctive strengths and not competing with each other but working together, has enormous potential benefit both for the young people of Aotearoa and the future of our country as an island nation in the Pacific," Prof Smith said.
University funding derived from a competitive pursuit of student numbers, which had led to universities often offering the same courses, sometimes in the same locations, he said.
"In the current climate of financial difficulties, universities are now also cutting the same courses even though these decisions might not ultimately be valuable for the prosperity of the country as a whole."
"We hope the government will provide funding to support this initiative between [Victoria] and Otago.
"We would also like to see this collaboration inform the university sector review that has been announced by the government, as it could offer both tangible study opportunities for our students and economies of scale across the country’s university sector."
