Diaspora NZ with David Booth
00:43:49 · Jamie Beaton, David Booth
[00:43:49] S1: was Yeah. [00:43:50] S0: 14. You look at some examples of people who might sort of stay at home all the way through undergrad and then try to get into Stanford postgrad MBA or whatever. When is the right time to get international international experience? Experience? And And and and I don't know why, but I think... But I'd love to hear your take on on, like, why is the international piece so important for young Kiwis?
00:44:06 · Jamie Beaton
[00:44:06] S1: Great question. So I would say in general, the more self disciplined you are, the longer you can stay in your home country. But if you're the kind of person who's very affected by your environment and if the people around you aren't so ambitious, you gotta go faster. So basically, if you're the kind of student who your whole school can be chilling, and age 13 to 18, you're grinding in your room doing academics and you're fine with that, you can stay in high school. But if you're the kind of person where if all your friends are out, you know, relaxing during high school, that will influence you to calm down, then you should go you should go sooner. So long story short for most students, undergrad is the best time to go. Undergrad's formative. It's before your career begins. It sets your social networks. It gives you insights into, you know, main skills, different career pathways. Undergrad's usually best. Some students should go during high school, but that's usually quite expensive, and there isn't as much funding and financial aid and scholarships. So I would say my default is undergrad. Postgrad is a lot worse than undergrad because a lot of the time, the undergrad degree is the most pivotal for kinda getting a lot of this stuff started. Your So postgrad is useful, but I would say it's distinctively not as useful as undergrad. So that's where I'd recommend most students focus. And, you know, you see this and that there are some universities that have all kinds of postgrad programs. Many of the graduates actually don't do that well. The undergrad ones are the ones that really create the fire in people's careers. Yeah. And then I would say for Kiwis, you know, everyone, we just need to create a more aspirational culture in the schools and make sure that students are really motivated to finish high school. There are horrible stats. For example, I think the bottom 40 schools in New Zealand, only 3% of the graduates go to university. The harrowing stats. Even even the top 40 schools, I think only 80% go to university. Now we need to make sure the university is actually teaching things that are valuable. But on the whole, you know, we can't have huge portions of society not being able to access these opportunities.
00:45:49 · Jamie Beaton
So I would say, you don't need to have this kind of Harvard dream for every kid at New Zealand High School, but you do need them to finish year 13 math to a good level, finish maybe a bit of computer science, finish English to a high level so they can really, you know, be effective. Because I think if you drop out when you're 15, 16, you're gonna have big problems. And so that's where I would obsess over. I also think that, you know, having some paths for acceleration. Recently, I've heard of horrible things where there are public schools across New Zealand that are removing their accelerated tracks, and they're not enabling kids to be streamed at different levels. Yep. And so everyone's just thrown together. And that's usually a bad recipe for everyone. You know? Yep.
00:46:25 · David Booth
[00:46:25] S0: Yep. Do you think about sort of the New Zealand undergrad regime? And in particular, I mean, if if I recall my university days, I had a lot of fun in Otago. I would not call it an aspirational environment. You know, to your point about, like, that you are the product of your environment, I I think it perhaps was unique in being motivated to go and build businesses and do things while studying, but the vast majority of people weren't. They're just there for for a good time. There's this idea of sort of... It's almost finishing school that comes after. It's that sweet spot between high school, you've stepped out of home, you're out in the world, you're sort you're sort of building your character, building yourself before the workforce. And I wonder if you were put in charge, you're now the minister of education in New Zealand, what what can you do without just sending people off around the world? Totally. Though that may be the answer for some of them, what can we do for the sort of the core of the the undergrad ecosystem in New Zealand?
00:47:14 · Jamie Beaton, David Booth
[00:47:14] S1: Yeah. So I think in New Zealand, you you have a lot of universities that need to build a core capability that are currently trying to do bit of everything. So I would... Rather than having all these different engineering colleges or doing engineering, I'd rather focus resources as a country on two or three of the best ones and make sure that we're actually... I'd I'd actually use government funding to bring in Carnegie Mellon faculty, bring in some top talent from offshore. I'd build some exchange programs, some of the world's top universities. I'd have some exchanges where there's online courses being delivered from Yep. You know, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley Engineering back to, for example, New Zealand. I would, you know, cut departments that aren't really... That are resource strains, and I would use that capital to make some of the best departments even better, world class. I'd [00:47:53] S0: rather specific Yeah. Functionality or I... Like, so say campuses, like, Christchurch is renowned for being engineering campus, Otago is now being a medical campus. Yep. So you'd say pick the one, and it's almost within the the news... Yeah. The University of New Zealand framework, you could have the specific campus that would have the world class access to the the faculty, international and local. Yeah.
00:48:14 · Jamie Beaton
[00:48:14] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So I would I would make sure that I'm really headhunting some top professors. I think you only need you only need five or 10 amazing faculty to transform a university. Mhmm. So I think you bring in some of those guys, you know, into each school, you know, you you stop investing in a bunch of the unproductive departments, and you focus fire on the things that really help Kiwis. I'd rather we have, 10 domains where the New Zealand universities are the best in the world or or at least top, say, 30 in the world than than hundreds that are mediocre. Mhmm. Because at least then some Kiwis can stay locally and thrive. Other Kiwis can go offshore, but you don't have sort of mediocrity across, you know, a whole set of departments. That's not good for anybody. Yep. The other thing that I would do is I would actually increase the entry standards for certain degrees, and then I would... Because what you have is this horrible problem where the standards are low to get into university, so kids in high school don't try very hard. And they have... It's like a doom loop where the kids don't have strong academic credentials. They go to university. University has gotta soften their standards. You actually need to create some programs at the universities in New Zealand that are selective and aspiration and ambitious so that many Kiwis will actually work harder in high school to get in. Yep. Many high school students are pushed by incentives. Right? Mhmm. And if you make it so easy, people won't try in high school. And you see that, you know, everyone knows year 12 year 13 is very chill for many Kiwis. So I would play with the entry standards there. I would also introduce a Singapore style government funding mechanism where students can go offshore for their degree as long as they come back and work in New Zealand for, you know, a number of years. Mhmm. And you could calibrate that based on the cost of the degree. That's been very effective for Singapore. Many Singaporeans go to the world's best schools. They come back to Singapore, and then they thrive within within the economy. And then also, you know, Singapore's got some powerhouse local universities, n US, NTU, two universities that are amazing. We don't need to make 40 great universities in New Zealand. We just need one or two that are truly world class.