And the winner is?
So who is the winner - the student, the owner of the school or society in general?
As stated before (in this thread) - it all comes down to supply and demand.
Firstly (and being repititious) there are few countries that offer loans for aviation like NZ - you need a rich daddy in Europe and beyond, so be grateful.
However, the access to places and ease of getting funding means there are more pilots looking for work than right hand and left hand seats combined. The added cost (or problems) with the transferability of the licence (or the professional qualification) means that for NZ trained pilots overseas employment opportunities may be limited. If you train as a nurse you can transfer your qualification almost anywhere for a fee payable to the local registration body - even though the practices and roles/specifications may be very different. the worldwide shortage of health professionals means they can earn big bucks overseas to pay off training, and as people are always sick (and the population ageing) the demand there will increase, As we all know things like SARS, invading countires, terrorism, all have a negative impact on air travel.
I do not think that having the NZQA (whom in my experience are dumb and dumber in their workings) on the aviation scene, validating degrees is of any value, and it is only by their involvement that these loans are available. Degrees and beyond are there to provide students the ability to demonstrate their assimilation and synthesis of knowledge by applying theory to practice, However, degrees are about identifying new ways of working, through dissertations, etc. In aviation the major concerns are safety and good airmanship (intrinsically linked), which are competancy based, rather than solely knowledge based. Considerable work has been done in a variety of fields to identify strategies to credit practice rather than exams. Why do the likes of Massey and Wintech have so much emphasis on business when those studying want to fly, not run an airline? Purely to get the academic credit to allow for funding.
I am watching with interest the growth of the Wananga in NZ - you know the lot who offer free courses in all sorts of nonsence - usually with the free tracksuit that seems to be mandatory! They are working there way into other industries, regardless of regulation (and as someone with close involvement with health care I know they are upsetting the apple cart with some of their programmes). They have already eroded many programmes within the Polytech sector and are now the largest tertiary provider in NZ
It will be interesting to see if they align themselves with any training organisations (e.g. clubs) to attempt to generate a new stream of business