Last year, the Initiative released a report on administrative bloat at New Zealand universities. It showed that the majority of staff at New Zealand universities are non-academics, and that this has been the case for quite some time. Read more

Late last year, I taught my final course for Victoria University of Wellington, guiding 19 young Kiwis around Greece for the Classics field trip. The trip offered plenty of food for thought (not to mention food) for anyone interested (and how could you not be?) in the stupendous artistic and intellectual achievements of the ancient Greeks. Read more

Visiting family in England as the new year got off to a chilly start, there was one story that dominated the headlines. A news story that, curiously enough, was prompted by a drama series that we had watched on the telly only a few days before. Read more

Last week it was reported that Queensland public servants have been offered up to five days of paid leave to tend to their ‘social and emotional wellbeing’ in the wake of the results of the Voice referendum. This is an obvious step in the right direction. Read more

At the Initiative, we have consistently stood up for the rights of random bureaucrats to stop people making harmless choices in their everyday lives. That’s why we were strong supporters of John Key’s decision to ban pseudoephedrine from pharmacies. Read more

Victoria University of Wellington has defended its plans to stop teaching German, Italian, Latin and Greek and to cease research in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and French. ‘It’s not like anybody speaks these languages anymore,’ Ex Nihilo Vice Provost Brenda Boffin told us in an exclusive interview, ‘except for the 1.1 billion or so Chinese speakers, the 559 million Hispanophones, the 310 million speakers of French, the hundred and twenty million or so speakers of German and Japanese, and the almost 70 million Italian-speakers.’ When we mentioned that China and Japan together accounted for over $15 billion in exports last year, and that Germany, Mexico and France accounted for over a billion more, Prof. Read more

Why does so much of the world speak English? As someone who was born in Canada, educated in the UK and US, and has now been living in New Zealand for more than a decade, the question has always fascinated me. Read more

A few months ago, I stepped into a parallel universe. I was following up a routine administrative task and soon found myself outside a building I’d never seen before, after 10 years working at Victoria University. Read more

As a sometimes absent-minded academic, I’m often very grateful for non-academic staff. Helping me set up my courses before the trimester begins. Read more