The Government scored a P.R. victory last week with the release of their final position on Fee Maxima . The losers? Students (again) and in the long term, New Zealand. Once again Government is missing the point of tertiary education.

It was clever marketing. By announcing with great solemnity back in May that the three year old fee freeze was over and would be replaced by a matrix of maximum fees for tertiary courses, the Government had students braced for a return to the bad old days.

The Brad Sugar adage to "exceed your customers' expectations" is significantly easier to achieve when you have systematically depressed them. The fact that Steve Maharey had us all expecting the worse and then 'responded to student concerns' by giving up a bit of ground has obscured what this really means for students: That the Government has effectively locked in perpetual fee increases.

While post grad courses have been limited to a $500 increase, undergraduate course fees can now rise by a maximum of five per cent each year. The original proposal had no yearly rise limit and it is this concession that has apparently won over student associations.

Mr Maharey has faith that university administrators will be restrained about how they apply fee increases in the future. The hostile response from Vice Chancellors to the limits he has placed on annual increases suggests it would be wise to be suspicious about that.

In fact Universities are being squeezed. Caught between increasingly vociferous demands for pay increases, in order to bring NZ salaries a little closer to internationally comparative levels, and stretched infrastructure, the institutions are looking for room to manoeuvre.

At the same time government funding is being increasing geared towards a vocational approach. The basis of tertiary education has undergone a significant shift away from a love of learning and of wisdom, to a job ticket. Instead of learning new ways of thinking, critical analysis and creativity, graduates are now, more than ever, entering the workforce with a set of skills geared towards a pre-determined career path.

Without a broad approach to education that allows students to analyse, adapt and take advantage of new and changing circumstances, we are in danger of becoming followers rather than innovators. Right now, when so much is possible and so much is at stake, intelligence (as opposed to training) is more important than ever.

In that context the continued underfunding of tertiary education is doing our country a real disservice.

The money is there. Through overseas sharemarket investments, the Government has lost more than $120 million in two years by pouring money into the global casino economy. Over the next forty years the Government is investing tens of billions of dollars in offshore sharemarket funds, yet fails to adequately invest in Aotearoa, because it sees 'vote education' as a 'cost'. Ask students, or the institutions for that matter, what they could do with that money.

The Government's fee maxima policy fails students but it also fails our country by continuing to ignore the importance of education as the best investment available to us.