Victoria University Male Enrolments & Graduations Dip Below 38%
On September 21, 2023, Radio New Zealand reported that the capital city’s university, Victoria, would be axing 229 jobs and 6 courses and putting 11 others on managed plans, as a means to save $21 million. The cuts hit the Humanities and Geography hardest.
This data and data from UC, Otago, AUT and Ara beg several questions: are we facing a men’s tertiary education crisis or a blip on the institutions heart rate monitors? Is anyone taking notice of Generation Z males’ sagging performance? Is this the symptom of a wider malaise amongst this group? And, what will be the flow on effects for our society and economy if the trend continues?
The NZR
But Victoria is not alone in its plight to cut costs. Cost-cutting measures have been seen at AUT, Otago, and Massey too.
Victoria’s enrolment and graduation data is an eyeopener. Not just for the fact that enrolment numbers have slipped, nor because graduation numbers have as well fallen.
But because men have taken the biggest tumble across almost all disciplines except Graduation Research and Health.
In 2020, at the outset of the COVID-era, men made up 41.42 percent of enrolments, and 40.01 percent of graduates. In 2023, the numbers had slid to 39.69 percent and 37.34 percent. This year, males enrolling for semester 1, made up just 37.65 percent of Victoria’s student population.
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