I have had a long   career with UC Econ ,  arriving from Canada in Jan 1976. Late last year, 2014,  I “retired” from the University ..  in a less then congenial manner and amidst a great deal of institutional change (“restructuring”)  at UC.  One more of many. How many? I thought many of my former colleagues , and so many former students,  might find this broad brush  picture of  changes to the quantity and quality  of human capital in the Economics Department interesting. A picture is , indeed, worth 1000 words.

It’s not hard to see the trends in both quality and quantity of academic capital here, trends that any “investor” in economics education in New Zealand should be aware of . I find it predictable – but also strange –  that historical, time series  information on the quantity and quality of academic staff, department by department, is NOT made publicly available to investors on the demand side (domestic or international students) or on the supply side (academic staff with international qualifications and research reputations).   For investors we all are, as staff and as students. A little bit of foreknowledge goes  a long way when investing in a company. Why not also for a University? And the quantity and quality of academic human capital is any University’s greatest asset.  Altbach’s argument  It’s the faculty stupid! is unassailable.

The dates are plus or minus 1 year, as I had to distill most of this information from paper calendars in the archives of McMillan Brown. If you see any glaring errors of omission or commission please let me know [One omission I’d like to correct  is to incoproate the staff in Finance, nominally part of the Economics Department since around 2009?? – if you can help me out here I’ll glady add it to graphic]  If you would like your own personal copy of the spreadsheet that I used please just email me