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• Tertiary institutions face the highest student-to-staff ratios since 2016, impacting staff workload.
• Staff numbers dropped by 1.1%, with funding not keeping pace with 25% inflation over six years.
• The Tertiary Education Union warns of increased mental health issues and service cuts affecting students and staff.

Tertiary institutions are feeling the impact of the highest student to staff ratios since 2016 - with reports of staff dealing with more mental health difficulties in students.

New Ministry of Education data shows the ratio of students per academic staff member at universities was 19.6 in 2024, up from 18.7 in 2023.

National polytechnic Te Pukenga also experience a rise, up to 16.7 from 15.0.

Private training establishments increased from 13.1 to 16.0 in the same time frame.

The number of total staff across all institutions dropped by 1.1% in that period, from 50,240 to 49,700.

Full-time equivalent staff also decreased by 0.5%.

Tertiary Education Union national secretary, Sandra Grey, said there’s less staff to get the work needed done.

“This is because we’ve seen money coming out of the tertiary education sector.”

“There isn’t enough to pay for the staff that are needed to look after students, and that’s not just academic staff, that’s all the support staff, the administrators, the counsellors, the doctors.”

Grey said “nobody’s winning at the moment”.

“It’s going to harm students and communities, and it’s going to be disastrous for employers who are actually reliant on quality tertiary education to get their next skilled workers.”

Massey University cut more than 60 science roles as part of a restructure in 2023, while the University College of Learning has proposed cuts to staff and courses in a bid to save $7.1 million.

Universities NZ chief executive Chris Whelan said Government funding hasn’t increased on par with inflation.

“Over the past six years inflation has been 25% but funding has only increased by 15%,” he said.

“Universities have had to find ways of offsetting that shortfall in funding and with staffing being nearly 55% of university costs, one of a number of strategies has been to reduce staff numbers.”

Whelan said this has resulted in the slight drop in the ratio of academic staff to students.

“Much of the reduction has been through exiting programmes with relatively low student demand and, therefore, much higher ratios of staff to students,” he added.

“Overall ratios remain broadly in line with other public university systems internationally.”

But Grey said staff are having to deal with more mental health difficulties in students as they cope with less staff.

“There’s been cuts to counselling services, cuts to nursing services, it can take six weeks to get a crisis intervention on mental health issues in some of our institutions.”

“That means that a lot more burden is coming back to those who see students every day, the administrators who are in the office, the library staff and the academic staff.”

She said they all see this playing out, because students will turn to whatever person is in front of them when there’s no support service.

“And not everybody is a specialist in dealing with hardship.”

Grey said it’s also hard for academic staff to up skill themselves, when they have to teach more students.

“If you don’t have enough staff just to keep the lights on, it’s very difficult to learn new skills, to take time to adjust your lesson plans, to take time to look after students.”

She believes the country’s institutions are at a cliff edge.

“We need more money being put into tertiary education to ensure the right staff at the right level are being employed,” she said.