A university lecturer has fired shots at the education system, claiming the number of tertiary students who are “functionally illiterate” is at crisis level.

Associate Professor of Sociology at Canterbury University Mike Grimshaw believes New Zealand is under-educating and over-qualifying.

He tells Heather du Plessis-Allanit’s a wider societal issue of how we value education, fund it and what we want from the system.

New Zealand pumps out around 45,000 tertiary graduates a year. Grimshaw says there is no increase in the societal, cultural and economic outcomes that degrees are said to provide.

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