Tertiary education's death by a thousand cuts

At the end of last year, a couple of opinion pieces crossed my desk about the function that universities are  supposed to perform in society (The Australia Institute, 2025; White, 2025). Richard Denniss, a plain-English speaking economist and co-CEO of The Australia Institute, explained that "at the moment [universities]'re in the worst of both worlds [...as] they're all quite poorly regulated" (0.25). Australia's universities are "not companies and they don't have directors and they don't report to the share market" "but they're also not government departments and they're not showing up at [select] committees and [...] having ministers and opposition and crossbenches grilling them" (0.58), which is also true of New Zealand universities.

He went on to say that universities are "not getting investor scrutiny. They're not getting parliamentary scrutiny. They are getting a lot of public money" through government fee funding arrangements and now they are also "paying their vice chancellors up to $1.5 million a year" (The Australia Institute, 2025, 1:08). So we begin with poor governance, and a potential lack of accountability. Then we add in the complication of overpriced executives who ARE NOT WORTH TWENTY TIMES A LECTURER SALARY, let alone three times a PM's salary; particularly when claiming unjustifiable financial hardship within the sector. Ah, those wealthy universities which lock away "multibillion dollar accumulated surpluses" (1:16), and still "cry poor" and use financial pressure as an excuse to sack staff and cut popular courses. In New Zealand it is the same: tertiary institutes are continuously cutting jobs, closing courses and departments, often requiring a government 'lifelines' simply to stay afloat (White, 2025). 

Hmm. What is wrong with this picture? How do we manage to get glory projects like flash new buildings and flights of fancy when no one is watching, and why do the people in charge start to think like they are gods? And why do the people on the ground get less and less to do more and more?

But wait, there's more. We also have got our priorities out of whack: our universities have become obsessed with chasing revenue - being business-like and chasing international student full fees - at the expense of their core mission: education. Our tertiary institutes are supposed to deliver good quality undergraduate education and, in the process of that, those two teach also deliver ground-breaking research (The Australia Institute, 2025). Education is a social good, lifting the skills and critical thinking abilities of the national population. It is not primarily for businesses to make money: that may happen as a multiplier of education.

Here in New Zealand, we are worse off than our Aussie cousins: we have truly neglected research: two good quality government reviews by Sir Peter Gluckman have been ignored, and crucial research funding - such as the Marsden Fund being withdrawn from humanities and social sciences, despite a vital need to address societal challenges - has been axed (White, 2025).

So we have no oversight; super high pay for twats; chasing money, not education; reducing research; and then the last twist: less public money to pay for education. Government funding is not keeping pace with the rising cost of living, so effectively over time, universities are forced to seek alternative revenue to keep the lights on, and once we get into that way of thinking, we start to see how we got to the super high pay for twats situation (The Australia Institute, 2025; White, 2025). 

And even worse in New Zealand, our current government has ACTUALLY cut funding, despite significant operational cost increases. So we really do have less to do with less. And less. 

Can't think why this is a problem... can you? 

Sam

References:

The Australia Institute. (2025, November 9). Decades of neoliberalism have broken our universities [Ebony Bennett interviews Richard Denniss; video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/dSbKSqD-JR0

White, L. (2025, November 10). We’ve forgotten what universities are for. The Spinoff. https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/10-11-2025/weve-forgotten-what-universities-are-for

read more "Tertiary education's death by a thousand cuts"

Service organisation decline, part 1

I have been a member of a few not for profit, or NFP, organisations: interest, sport, professional, and community groups. But I am not currently a member of any service organisations. 

Service organisations are those which were - theoretically - set up to do good in the community. Rotary was founded as a pot-luck lunch club in Chicago where a lawyer, "a tailor, an engineer, and a coal supplier" which moved each week to another member's house (Tamayo, 2018, p. xiii) "hence the name 'Rotary'". The model was set, way back in 1905, with every member being in a different trade, so Rotarians could network across communities. Rotary started in New Zealand in the 1920s (New Zealand History, 2026). Another American service organisation, Lions, was another Chicago-born idea of the early 20th century, establishing clubs in New Zealand later, in the 1950s (Lions Clubs, 2026; Tamayo, 2018). The Masonic Lodge is the eldest: 1717 marked the founding of the first 'grand lodge' in the UK (Freemasons New Zealand, 2026), with the first New Zealand branch being officially established in 1890.

In Aotearoa, to the best of my knowledge, there are no homegrown service organisations. We have imported these from elsewhere: largely the USA with Rotary and Lions; and the UK with the Masonic Lodge. Menz Sheds arrived here from Aussie (but I feel this is more of an interest group, rather than a service organisation; Te Ara, 2026). I became a member of Rotary some years ago because they said they wanted to make change, and were actively recruiting younger members and women. However, I left because I found the organisation - despite saying they sought change - too old-fashioned; fighting change every step of the way. I was unable to effect anything meaningful, so left. My mother was a member of the gendered arm of Lions, Lionesses: however, her local branch was forced into closure as it was literally dying out. I think my grandfather, a great-great grandfather and a great-great-great, were members of the Masonic Lodge. 

I have been idly noting for over twenty years the decline of service organisations, and recently I got to more actively wondering exactly what is driving the decline. I have a few vague thoughts based on my own experience: that (a) existing members want the organisations to stay in their current cultural shape, resisting modernisation; (b) that this shape is too rigid for a diffuse society; (c) the organisations' original networking purpose is outdated. However, I have not yet gone looking for any supporting evidence; now it is time to see what the experts have to say.

From my reading, it seems that part of that rigidity due to the shape of society at the time these organisations were created: they are a societal reflection. Service groups flourished at a time with a division of labour: women worked at home; men went out to work. Flanked by two world wars and a great depression, members could network over lunch, with organisational membership being "cosmopolitan [due to] their global reach" (Tamayo, 2018, p. xvi). A man - and it was a man - in provincial Maine could connect with a man in provincial New Zealand. Today 67% of all New Zealand women also work outside the home, alongside 75% of men (Ministry of Women, 2026).

And today we have the internet and digital media as a societal bridge. Perhaps Tim Berners-Lee's protocol has filled the service group-sized space. 

Even in the US where many service organisations originated, significant "social, cultural, and economic changes" are "contributing to a decline in volunteerism" (Conway, 2024, p. 11), so this is not only happening in New Zealand.  Along with increasing secularity, families today are smaller, both parents may work, or may parent alone without "the time, labor, or fiscal resources" to donate; and we tend to spend more "free time alone and at home", not necessarily wanting to network with people outside our families (p. 11). Do we have less 'free' time? Or is there more we want to put into our free time? 

There are interesting questions. I will continue to explore. 

Sam

References:

Conway, A. L. (2024). Serving the Nation: Volunteer Management from an Anthropological Perspective [Master's thesis, California State University]. https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/41687t01c

Freemasons New Zealand. (2026). History. https://freemasonsnz.org/history

Lions Clubs. (2026). History of Lions Clubs. https://www.lionsclubs.org.nz/about/history-lions-nz

Ministry of Women. (2026). Labour market participation. Manatū Wāhine. https://www.women.govt.nz/women-and-work/labour-market-participation

New Zealand History. (2026). First Rotary club in New Zealand founded: 7 June 1921. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/first-rotary-club-new-zealand-founded

Tamayo, D. (2018). Volunteers as a Community of Practice: Rotary and Lions Clubs, the Mexican Middle Classes, and the Post-Revolutionary State, 1920s-1960s [Doctoral thesis, University of California]. https://escholarship.org/content/qt6ds9m3b3/qt6ds9m3b3_noSplash_9fe8ce200da731f05c191571e8b1b082.pdf

Te Ara. (2026). Mental health community organisations: MENZSHED New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/29430/mental-health-community-organisations-menzshed-new-zealand

read more "Service organisation decline, part 1"

MS Excel can't insert new cells

If, on trying to insert a row or a column in Excel, we have ever had a really long error message, "Microsoft Excel can't insert new cells because it would push non-empty cells off the end of the worksheet. These non-empty cells might appear empty but have blank values, some formatting, or a formula. Delete enough rows or columns to make room for what you want to insert and then try again" it may be because of two tricksy little reasons. 

Firstly, we may unknowingly have a merged cell somewhere (Anonymous, 2019). 

Secondly, we may have a single, filled cell right at the end of the sheet that does not allow us to add one more row or column. 

To find out which, the process is simple, which I have covered before in a post here, detailed by Kader (2024): 

1.  Select the last active column in your spreadsheet Key Ctrl, Shift & the Right Arrow to highlight all the 'live' columns (or rows)
2. Key Ctrl & - (minus, and I used the number pad for this key) to delete cell contents 
3. Key Ctrl & S to save 
4. Close out. 

Reopen and try again to insert your cell or column. Hopefully that works for you, just as well as it worked for me :-)

Sam

References:

Anonymous. (2019, January 25). Excel can't insert new cells because it would push non-empty cells off the end of the spreadsheet. Microsoft Ignite. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4991814/excel-cant-insert-new-cells-because-it-would-push

Anonymous. (2018, January 3). Can't insert new cells - what what?. Microsoft Ignite. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4949199/cant-insert-new-cells-what-what?forum=msoffice-all&referrer=answers

Kader, E. (2024, February 12). [Solved!] CTRL+END Shortcut Key Goes Too Far in Excel (6 Fixes). Exceldemy. https://www.exceldemy.com/excel-ctrl-end-goes-too-far/

read more "MS Excel can't insert new cells"

The yeah nah of job growth

Way back in 2016, a pair of US researchers updated a working paper for showing that most of our gains in jobs, 94% our "net job growth" created between 2005 and 2015, in fact, came from what the researchers called "alternative work" (Katz & Krueger, 2016, p. 7).

Alternative work is where employees are "working or self-employed as an independent contractor, an independent consultant, or a freelance worker" (Katz & Krueger, 2016, p. 9); working for organisations such as Deliveroo, Uber, or similar; where power is wielded by the employer, and the 'independent' contractor is effectively a price-taker. This type of work appears to offer "workers the ‘freedom’ and ‘flexibility’ to work whenever and wherever they want, becoming a source of income while positively contributing to platform workers’ work–life balance" (Cano et al., 2021, p. 47). And yep, it sounds like a good deal for "governments focused on job creation, [but such roles] are also symbolic of precarious work, and hence of deteriorating working conditions and labour standards (p. 47).

Further, the reality is significantly different for the 'contractor' than the marketed ideal sounds. If contractors refuse a gig, the algorithm starts to discount them quite quickly, and they end up not making enough money to survive. There appear to be a growing class of precarious workers who cannot make ends meet, despite working far more than a full time role.

I found the Katz and Krueger (2016) findings interesting: there is evidence we were eroding our employee-base well before Covid-19, and after we have accounted for the number of new jobs we have created, less the number of jobs that have vanished, damn near all of them were contingent roles.

We are not creating safe, secure employment, but perilous, precarious work where we have to take the pay that is offered, because we have no bargaining power.

So: Yay! Job Growth. Oh no: it is contingent. I am sure this will all end really well.

Sam

References:

Cano, M. R., Espelt, R., & Morell, M. F. (2021). Flexibility and freedom for whom? Precarity, freedom and flexibility in on-demand food delivery. Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 15(1), 46-68. https://doi.org/10.13169/workorgalaboglob.15.1.0046

Katz, L. F., & Krueger, A. B. (2016). The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015 [Working paper #22667]. National Bureau of Economic Research [NBER]. http://www.nber.org/papers/w22667

read more "The yeah nah of job growth"

Costing women's work

As Lucassen says, "women’s work is often overlooked compared to men’s" (2021, p. 1): I have written about this before (here), but an Australian researcher has just thrown a whole lot of skull sweat into actually costing it out (Risse, 2025). And it turns out that the proportion of overlooked, under-costed, and economically undervalued productivity in our societies is quite significant; for both men AND women. 

No surprises there. Men have almost another $500/week of unpaid work; women almost $800 (Risse, 2025). So we have clear evidence that women in our societies "contribute the bulk (61.5%) of total time spent on unpaid work and care" (Risse, 2025). Even better, this article provides a data entry field which allows us to enter and calculate out our own weekly unpaid hours. We can enter our estimated average weekly volunteer hours; the childcare hours we do; how many elder-care hours we deliver; and how many hours we spend on other domestic duties. Better still, if we are a woman, we can add a factor for our gendered pay, to have that corrected for, and to see just how many hours of work we are actually doing each week. Brilliant!

Check that tool out here, at the heading "Total value of labour", here.

It turns out that women are doing just as many productive hours as men: they simply aren't calculated as part of our economic budgeting. The author closes with a quote from our own Marilyn Waring, who noted that "The laws of economics and those that govern the UNSNA [United Nations Systems of National Accounts] are creations of the male mind and do not reflect or encompass the reality of the female world. The conceptual models are limited to the world that the economist knows or observes, and housework is most certainly not part of that world" (Risse, 2025).

It is important stuff, doing the dishes, taking out the rubbish, and turning the lights off. No job is done until that stuff is done.

Sam

References:

Lucassen, J. (2021). The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind. Yale University Press.

Risse, L. (2025, November 3). Unpaid ‘women’s work’ is worth $427 billion, new research shows. See how much your unpaid labour is worth. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/unpaid-womens-work-is-worth-427-billion-new-research-shows-see-how-much-your-unpaid-labour-is-worth-267860

read more "Costing women's work"

A few interesting nuggets

In researching material for recent post (here) I found a few interesting nuggets (side-projects, if you will). The first tip I heard was a second recommendation for the Cory Doctorow book on internet 'enshittification' (McBain, 2025, commenter "hureharehure"; Skopic, 2025). This was noteworthy because I tend to use only three platforms regularly: following a number of makers on YouTube; posting to LinkedIn, and a very minor storefront on BlueSky. Twitter, FB, Insta etc all feel too skewed (Wylie, 2019) and full of that 'enshittification' which Cory Doctorow appears to explores in his book (Skopic, 2025). So that is a definite reading list inclusion, and I have put in a request for the title at the library.

Second, the enshittification of the interweb is making me think more seriously about reading Sarah Wynn-Williamson's book on Facebook. I was reluctant, because her time at FB is now quite dated, but I am now thinking that I should read it. Shaping forces, and all that. I have also put in a library request for this one as well (but there is a LONG waiting list!).

And third, commenter hureharehure also helpfully suggested that if readers were unable to "read some of those links directly [we...] will likely be able to find archived versions with a site like https://archive.ph/" (McBain, 2025). Wow! The Archive.Today site was one I had not previously heard of, so I have banked that very helpful suggestion... and already used it several times to great effect to read articles which are behind paywalls. 

I will do some book reviews once I have read and digested the books :-)

Sam

References:

Archive.Today. (2026). Webpage Capture and Article Finder. https://archive.ph/

McBain, S. (2025, October 18). Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology

Skopic, A. (2025, August 22). Why the Internet is Turning to Shit. Current Affairs. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/why-the-internet-is-turning-to-shit

Wylie, C. (2019). Mindf* ck: Inside Cambridge Analytica’s plot to break the world. Profile Books.

Wynn-Williams, S. (2025). Careless People: A cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism. Flatiron Books.

read more "A few interesting nuggets "

Practice models to move a client session forward

How do we determine our process with a new client: to assist them to meet the goals they set for themselves? It is an interesting question to pose, and those of us who are experienced in field will probably simply say we will talk together. In the course of exploring the client telling us about what they want to achieve, we will start to get an idea of how we might proceed together. What we are hearing will start to slot into place, we will feel echoes of previously experienced patterns and solutions in what the client is sharing with us, and, if we listen carefully, and ask enough questions, a range of options will begin to present themselves.

However, what happens if a way forward does NOT present itself? What if we meet a totally new experience, and are at a loss? This is where using a practice model as a frame may give us some ideas to progress. For example, we could use any one of the following:

1. The Calgary-Cambridge guide (Kurtz & Silverman, 1996) (here)
2. The Choose–Get–Keep Model (Anthony et al., 1984) (here)
3. The Fonofale model (Pulotu-Endemann, 2001) (here)
4. The Kakala framework (Fono, 2014) (here)
5. The ROPES model (Nemec, et al., 1992) (here)
6. The SOAP framework (Weed, 1970), also known in New Zealand as SOTAP (Evans et al., 2022) (here)
7. Te Whare Tapa Wha (Durie, 1985) (here)
8. The Zunker Model for integrating assessment results (Osborn & Zunker, 2016, p. 4) (here)

Getting familiar with these frameworks ahead of time, reflecting upon how they may have assisted when we were working with previous clients, mentally experimenting with the components, may assist us when we are feeling short of options. 

It is always good to have some alternatives to try. 

Sam

References:

Anthony, W. A., Howell, J., & Danley, K. S. (1984). Chapter 13: Vocational rehabilitation of the psychiatric disabled. In J. A. Talbott, M. Mirabi, L. Feldman (Eds.), The Chronically Mentally Ill: Research and services (pp. 215–237). Spectrum Publications, Inc.

Evans, M., Sykes, C., Hocking, C., Siegert, R., & Garratt, N. (2022). Inter-rater agreement when linking stroke interventions to the extended international classification of functioning, disability and health core set for stroke. Disability and Rehabilitation, 44(25), 8022-8028. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2021.2008525

Durie, M. H. (1985). A Māori perspective of health. Social Science & Medicine, 20(5), 483-486. https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(85)90363-6

Fono, T. L. (2014). Setting the scene: Working with pacific families [slide deck]. https://ana.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/mafi-tino-lelei.pdf

Nemec, P. B., McNamara, S., & Walsh, D. (1992). Direct Skills Teaching. Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal, 16(1), 13–25. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0095731

Pulotu-Endemann, F. K. (2001). Fonofale: Model of Health. Pacific Models for Health Promotion Workshop at Massey University, Wellington Campus, 7 September 2009. https://www.nelsontasmankindergartens.com/uploads/1/4/4/2/14426744/fonofalemodelexplanation.pdf

Osborn, D. S., & Zunker, V. G. (2016). Using Assessment Results for Career Development (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Weed, L. (1970). Medical records, medical education and patient care: the problem-oriented record as a basic tool. Case Western Reserve University Press.

read more "Practice models to move a client session forward"

Retiring retirement

Sir Dick Seddon, then PM, proposed a compulsory retirement age of 65 years in 1898 when the average life expectancy for a New Zealander was 54 (Schlaadt, 2009). Ouch: most of us wouldn't see 'retirement' before we sloped off to join everyone else in the dead centre of town (yep, bad Dad joke). We had a baby pension which "was rigorously means-tested [...] for those no longer able to work" which was only 4% of our then population (Schlaadt, 2009, p. 6).

By 1930 our average life expectancy was 65; by 1952 it was 70 (Global Stats, 2021), and at last 'Mr and Mrs Average' got to enjoy a couple of years as a reward for working productively for the benefit of the nation. Life expectancy has continued to increase, and while we still retire at 65, we are now likely to live to 83 (Statistics New Zealand, 2026a). That means an 18 year retirement pension payback from nation in return for our years of productivity. Retirement no longer compulsory: many enjoy working and want to keep contributing (Spoonley, 2020), but there are 17% of us over 65 (World Bank Group, 2026).

There is also a large percentage of us who can't afford to retire: those who don't own their own home; those who spent a lifetime looking after families so have few savings; those who have spent their lives being supported by their families so have no funds to make the pension liveable (Retirement Commission, 2023). This group of Kiwis at risk will form a significant financial burden for our future selves, and we need to plan how we will manage that humanitarian burden in a humanitarian way.

While easy to see in hindsight, instead of an age, we may have been better to have linked retirement and the pension to our life expectancy. Then successive governments would have found managing the cost of retirees relatively simple. Not only is this is a seriously unpopular topic to make change on - who is going to vote to retire later - there is a large block of older voters who all go to the polls.

(Good thing an ex-PM didn't use our retirement funds to fund some dams and stuff, eh. Oh wait: he did. But it was OK: twenty years later we set up another one. No harm done - only fifty years lost. I am sure that won't matter a bit.)

However, the real problem is not retirement: the real problem is birthrate. If we had enough young people coming along the population pipeline to balance out those of us who will be 'enjoying' living on half the minimum wage for the remainder of our natural, there would be no problem. But our replacement rate has dropped off a cliff, to 1.56 (Statistics New Zealand, 2026b). We used to simply plug the gap with migration: but if every other nation on the planet is experiencing the same issue with declining populations (Shaw, 2025), where will we get our new migrants from?

This bulge will go away, of course: retirees will die, but there will be fewer people to pay tax and to keep the lights on.

As a nation, we need to discuss retirement, perhaps retiring retirement, or change will 'happen' to us. Our ability to plan and effect change will be taken from us by paralysis and inaction.

I don't know what we will decide, but we really need to talk about it.

Sam

References:

Global Stats. (2021, February 20). Countries with highest Life Expectancy (1800 - 2099). YouTube. https://youtu.be/30TjaV4F3g

Retirement Commission. (2023). Tauākī Whakamaunga Atu | Statement of Intent 2023-2026. Te Ara Ahunga Ora. https://assets.retirement.govt.nz/public/Uploads/Corporate-reports/Statement-of-Intent/Statement-of-Intent-Tauaki-Whakamaunga-Atu-2023-2026.pdf

Schlaadt, R. J. (2009). Planning for retirement in 2025: A Delphi study. Retirement preparation – why is it so difficult? [Doctoral thesis, University of Otago). https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/esploro/fulltext/graduate/Planning-for-retirement-in-2025-A/9926479203301891?repId=12396704130001891&mId=13397144580001891&institution=64OTAGO_INST

Shaw, S. J. (Writer, Director, Producer). (2025, September 19). Birthgap [documentary film, Torch Pictures]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/m2GeVG0XYTc

Spoonley, P. (2020). Chapter 1: A Reshaped Society. In The New New Zealand: Facing demographic disruption (pp. 9-23). Massey University Press.

Statistics New Zealand. (2026). New Zealand cohort life tables: March 2025 update. https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/new-zealand-cohort-life-tables-march-2025-update/

Statistics New Zealand (2026b). Net migration falls in 2024. https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/net-migration-falls-in-2024/

World Bank Group. (2026). Population ages 65 and above (% of total population) - New Zealand. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.65UP.TO.ZS?locations=NZ

read more "Retiring retirement"

Building a better idiot part 2

A couple of years ago I wrote a piece on trying to find the source of the ‘make it idiot-proof and the world/universe will build a better idiot’ style of quote (here). This was - I thought - from a Robert Anson Heinlein book - which went something along the lines of "make a system idiot proof and the world will build a better idiot". I couldn't find anything in Heinlein, finding instead a quote in Cook (1990). This didn't feel right, as this saying was steeped in family lore and we had all well-left home by 1990... and none of us had read Cook's book.

So, as I had some energy, I would do a little more searching, deciding as I went along that seeking synonyms for idiot-proof may help. I hit a bit of pay-dirt with 'foolproof', finding a few earlier quotes, as follows (and in reverse chronological order):

• 1988: "There's no system foolproof enough to defeat a sufficiently great fool" (Davis, 1988, p. 46, 48, citing Teller). While I have found this widely as an 'inspirational' quote attributed to Teller, I have not yet found this actual phrase in any of Teller's writings thus far.
• 1979: "Anyone who imagines he has found a foolproof system is apt to learn that the fool is bigger than the proof" (Teller, 1979, p. 171). We have the man himself writing particular version. It is not quite as Davis (1988) has it, but reasonably close; and while we are not building a bigger fool, we do have size and the system both present. To me, this feels similar enough to "if we make something idiot-proof, we will build a better idiot" to be the source.

In addition, I found a slightly different version of the first Teller quote:

• 1982: "Having observed the evolution of nuclear technology, Edward Teller has commented: '...so far we have been extremely lucky... But with the great number of simians monkeying around with things they do not completely understand, sooner or later the fool will prove greater than the proof, even in a fool-proof system'" (Adler & Singer, 1982, p. 1412). Once again, this is not Teller saying this first-hand; it is a secondary source.
• 1976: and an earlier version almost identical to the first: "Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, believes that 'so far we have been extremely lucky... But with the great number of simians monkeying around with things that they do not completely understand, sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof even in a fool-proof system" (Hayes, 1976, p. 32). Again, a second-hand source.
• However, I have not been able to find this quote from Teller himself, which must be earlier than 1976.

Confusingly, I may have found another, similar version from a UK source: 

• 1984/1937: in the text, the author says: "As an experienced observer of the American scene, [Sir Ronald Charles] Lindsay knew what he was talking about and no remark was more accurate than that which he offered to the Foreign Secretary in March 1937 to the effect that Anglo-American relations were fool-proof and were only in danger when attempts were made to improve them" (Murfett, 1984, p. 25) and in the front matter, with the appearance of a quote, as "Anglo-American relations were fool-proof and only in danger when attempts were made to improve them" (p. xv, citing Sir Ronald Charles Lindsay to the Foreign Office, 22 Mar 1937). 
• As a result, it is unclear if this is Murfett's 1984 wording, or the original phrasing of Lindsay in 1937. There may be documentary proof, as a document number is supplied by Murfett (1984, p. xv): “Lindsay to Foreign Office, 22 Mar 1937, No. 247, A2378/38/45, FO 371/20651” in the book. However, am uncertain how I would get to view this. 

So currently I am not sure if (a) Lindsay owns the primary phrase and all others have built on it; or (b) the Teller is a parallel primary source and creates pre-1976 "simian" quote, the Teller 1979 "fool is bigger" quote is his smoothing of his own idea, with Davis morphing it into the short form in 1988, that in 1990 is formalised by and attributed to Cook; or (c) Teller has read/heard Lindsay and regurgitates it, followed by Davis and Cook; or (d) if Murfett in 1984 had previously read/heard Teller, and echoed this phrasing when writing about Lindsay's stance in 1937.

Isn't it fascinating just how deep down the rabbit hole we can go, looking for answers?!

Sam

References:

Adler, E., & Singer, R. (1982). Political Action Needed against Nuclear Escalation [Letters to the Editor]. American Journal of Public Health, 72(12), 1412. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.72.12.1412-a

Cook, R. (1990). The Wizardry Compiled. Baen Books.

Davis, J. (1988). Nuclear Reactions. Omni, 10(8), 40-48, 118.

Hayes, D. (1976). Nuclear Power: The fifth horseman [Worldwatch Paper 6]. The Worldwatch Institute.

Murfett, M. H. (1984). Fool-proof Relations: The search for Anglo-American naval cooperation during the Chamberlain years 1937-1940. Singapore University Press.

Teller, E. (1979). Energy from Heaven and Earth: In which a story is told about energy from its origins 15,000,000,000 years ago to its present adolescence. W. H. Freeman & Company.

read more "Building a better idiot part 2"

Why are Apprenticeships the 'poor relation'?

How did Apprenticeships become the poor relation of the qualifications field? 

Am I right in saying that they are? I think so: apprenticeships are considered a 'lesser' option by students, parents and educators. It has a "problem of esteem", where trades lack social status (Maurice-Takerei, 2025, p. 37). In Aotearoa New Zealand we have a history of resistance to, and fragmentary approaches to trades training and apprenticeship programmes, appears to have resulted in our vocational education lacking "a reliable place to sit" (Chan, 2020; Maurice-Takerei, 2025, p. 39). It lacks cohesion: as a nation we have shown we don't value it, and - as a result - we don't value it. We import tradespeople when we can't train enough (Maurice-Takerei, 2025). But we are also a nation of small businesses, where few organisations can afford to train apprentices. As a result, trades training is "seen as an option for students deemed less capable of succeeding in academic environments" (p. 39). Ouch. 

Whereas doing a degree is more than gaining a qualification: it is about "signalling", about creating personal advantage, and about building "reputational capital" from the conferring university. A degree provides "social networks and contacts" (Strathdee & Cooper, 2017, p. 374) which we obtain by attending and help us to access opportunities through in-group, insider knowledge (Strathdee & Cooper, 2017). A degree opens doors: regardless what our degree is in, it shows an employer that we can handle adversity and complete a body of challenging work over a number of years; we have a proven ability to think critically (Van Damme & Zahner, 2022). It shows our endurance and tenacity (Marshall, 2024). And it makes it easier for employers to understand the skills we must possess via "the proxy of the qualification" (Marshall, 2024, p. 591). 

In the past, professions that a degree takes us into were considered stable and "white-collar [... such as] accountancy and law" (Chan, 2020, p. 169)... and "durable". We were unlikely to be at risk of automation or AI. However, I think most of us know that was naive, as while many of the professions may as yet be "too difficult and costly to automate or to digitise", opinions are increasingly replicable by AI (p. 169). Automation cannot yet match "the complex range of environments [, ...and] the manual dexterity [...] required to accomplish many technical tasks" in fields such as plumbing or gas fitting (p. 169). Yet. 

Maurice-Takerei outlines some distasteful cultural antecedents shaped by our colonial history, which seems likely to have encouraged our lack of esteem for tradespeople; where learning a trade "is inferior to an academic education" (2025, p. 39). Further, decreasing global birthrates (Shaw, 2025) mean our ability to import those trades we need is looking decidedly rocky. 

We need to effect a cultural change in Aotearoa New Zealand where trades are valued, promoted, recruited for, and supported: before we run out of crafts people able to do this mahi.

Sam

References:

Chan, S. (2020). Identity, Pedagogy and Technology-enhanced Learning: Supporting the Processes of Becoming a Tradesperson. Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Maurice-Takerei, L. (2025). Change and Persistence: The Legacies for VET in Aotearoa, New Zealand. International Journal of Vocational Education Studies, 2(2), 35-51. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839473627-03

Marshall, S. (2024). Chapter 30: Future higher education in New Zealand: creating a universal learning community for future skills. In U.-D. Ehlers, L. Eigbrecht (Eds.), Creating the University of the Future: A global view on future skills and future higher education (pp. 589-611). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH.

Shaw, S. J. (Writer, Director, Producer). (2025, September 19). Birthgap [documentary film, Torch Pictures]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/m2GeVG0XYTc

Strathdee, R., & Cooper, G. (2017). Ethnicity, vocational education and training and the competition for advancement through education in New Zealand. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 69(3), 371-389. https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2017.1300595

Van Damme, D., & Zahner, D. (Ed.). (2022). Does Higher Education Teach Students to Think Critically?. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/cc9fa6aa-en

read more "Why are Apprenticeships the 'poor relation'?"

Search and AI brain rot

A recent post was about some research on the lack of brain activity when using AI tools (here; Kosmyna et al., 2025; McBain, 2025). What I also found some interesting user comments generated by the article (McBain, 2025). One, by a tutor/teacher, said that "that Googling an answer does provide knowledge [...as] long as the answer provided is the correct one" (commenter "bettycallmeal", McBain, 2025). While I would suggest that bettycallmeal may have meant 'information', rather than "knowledge", I understood the gap she was seeking to bridge for her students between search and the necessary injection of critical thinking to sift the grain from the dross.

One search solution I use is to avoid Google as much as I can, part of Alphabet's empire. I avoid Google - and Chrome - most of the time because of Alphabet's profit motive. Google is a business, collecting my cookies to track my online movements, feeding me ads designed to get me to buy, and selling my search data, and skewing my search results towards its clients, and to previous user search results in my area. It is now what they 'do'. I am not annoyed at a business being true to its nature, but I do not like constantly being marketed to/at. 

Instead, I sought out a search engine which had privacy at its core, and went with DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo aims "to protect the privacy of its users", and returns "the same search results for a specific keyword, without filtering those search results and personalizing them based on the [user's] history [to] the user" (Tyrsina, 2025). While I get fewer search results, often - not always though - those results are more accurate. Additionally, I use the Brave browser which while built on the Chrome platform, still slashes tracking cookies and advertising on my PC. On my mobile I use DuckDuckGo and Adblock browser. Those tools might also help bettycallsmeal's students.

But the problem is probably larger than just where we search. Another commenter (commenter "hureharehure", McBain, 2025) replied to bettycallmeal that another complication was that "the internet [...] is eating itself" - a timely reminder of the oroboros! - due to "much of the internet [now being full of] AI slop". It appears that many media platforms allow unreliable AI generated material to proliferate (read more here). Commenter hureharehure had found users to be "quite incurious about whether the information they seek is at all reliable" and pointed bettycallmeal to the following resources to assist her students (McBain, 2025):

• Users seeing the "AI-generated summary on Google search are significantly less likely to click on external links than users who don't" (commenter "hureharehure", McBain, 2025), with only 1% of users clicking on AI summary links (Chapekis & Lieb, 2025). Since Google’s AI Overviews launched in May 2024, 69% of Google news searches have users not clicking on any links, up from 56% (Barenholtz, 2025; commenter "hureharehure", McBain, 2025). So why is that, then?
• Well, because it appears that Google's AI summaries are giving people just enough information so they don't need to know more (Jaźwińska, 2025). Though I must confess, if I get a news article summary and it is on a platform I am subscribed to, I won't click through on a Google News link: I will go straight to the platform so it lowers the platform's Google bill
• Apparently nearly a billion people already use ChatGPT (The Economist, 2025); we are not talking all the other LLM platforms through, such as Deepseek, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and SciSpace for language work; Reclaim and SkedPal for planning; Midjourney, Dall-E, Firefly and Deep for images; Veo, Runway, Sora and Synthesia for video; Asana for calendar work (Karkar, 2025)
• Read an exploration of the "dead internet theory" (Prada, 2025) and a summary of platform slop, advertising and AI hallucination (Goodfriend, 2025; Koebler, 2025)
• Get a review of the forthcoming book by Cory Doctorow on internet 'enshittification' (Skopic, 2025)

These are things we should be telling our students, so they realise that any search is not necessarily a 'good' search. It may be a skewed search: for example, Google/Gemini AI search and summaries are likely to be skewed based on location search history, our national laws, local businesses who have Google Ad Words, and the data that has been fed into Gemini (Gleason et al., 2023). 

If our students are not using their critical thinking skills but accepting what search has delivered up to them, then "Houston, we have a problem" (Howard & Graze, 1995, 50:52): and the research appears to already be showing that problem. Our less critical thinkers seem to be already experiencing brain rot (Karunaratne & Adesina, 2023; Kosmyna et al., 2025; McBain, 2025). 

To me, more AI use seems unlikely to improve critical thinking skills, but to reduce them. And that is a serious problem. 

Sam

References:

Barenholtz, L. (2025, March 12). Google AI Overviews: SEO Tips and Strategies. Similar Web. https://www.similarweb.com/blog/marketing/seo/ai-overviews/

Chapekis, A., & Lieb, A. (2025, July 22). Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/

Gleason, J., Hu, D., Robertson, R. E., & Wilson, C. (2023, June). Google the gatekeeper: How search components affect clicks and attention. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (Vol. 17, pp. 245-256). https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/download/22142/21921

Goodfriend, D. (2025, July 10). Deadly Slop: Artificial intelligence on the battlefield. The Baffler. https://thebaffler.com/latest/deadly-slop-goodfriend

Howard, R. (Director), & Grazer, B. (Producer). (1995). Apollo 13 [motion picture]. Universal Studios.

Karkar, J. (2025, August 21). 29 Top AI Platforms to Look Out for in 2025. TestGrid. https://testgrid.io/blog/top-ai-platforms/

Karunaratne, T., & Adesina, A. (2023, October). Is it the new Google: Impact of ChatGPT on students’ information search habits. In Proceedings of the 22nd European Conference on e-Learning, ECEL (pp. 147-155). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thashmee-Karunaratne/publication/374911381_Is_it_the_new_Google_Impact_of_ChatGPT_on_Students%27_Information_Search_Habits/links/6589f3110bb2c7472b0fc0d8/Is-it-the-new-Google-Impact-of-ChatGPT-on-Students-Information-Search-Habits.pdf

Jaźwińska, K. (2025, July 31). Traffic Apocalypse: Google’s AI Overviews are killing click-throughs to news sites. Colombia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/traffic-apocalypse-google-ai-overviews-killing-click-throughs-news-sites.php

Koebler, J. (2025, July 15). The Hyperpersonalized AI Slop Silo Machine Is Here. 404 Media. https://www.404media.co/the-ai-slop-niche-machine-is-here/

Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X. H., Beresnitzky, A. V., ... & Maes, P. (2025). Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task. arXiv. Advance online publication. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

McBain, S. (2025, October 18). Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology

Prada, L. (2025, September 15). One-Third of the Internet Is Just Bots Now. Seriously. VICE. https://www.vice.com/en/article/yep-one-third-of-the-internet-is-just-bots-now/?

Skopic, A. (2025, August 22). Why the Internet is Turning to Shit. Current Affairs. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/why-the-internet-is-turning-to-shit

The Economist. (2025, July 14). AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?.  https://www.economist.com/business/2025/07/14/ai-is-killing-the-web-can-anything-save-it

Tyrsina, R. (2025, October 10). What is DuckDuckGo and what are the benefits of using it?. Digital Citizen. https://www.digitalcitizen.life/what-is-duckduckgo/

Wylie, C. (2019). Mindf* ck: Inside Cambridge Analytica’s plot to break the world. Profile Books.

Wynn-Williams, S. (2025). Careless People: A cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism. Flatiron Books.

read more "Search and AI brain rot"

Some Heinlein quotes part 1

In my search for the - potentially - Robert Heinlein ‘make it idiot-proof and the world/universe will build a better idiot’-style quote (which you can read more about here), I found a number of other quotes by the same author that I had always enjoyed. As I was trying to find the actual source of the main quote, it was relatively easy to record and keep track of them.

These particular quotes became part of our family language, being regularly used in our family for years because we all read these books. They form part of our shared history. 

Those favourites are:

• “I was just pulling your leg and it came off in my hand” (Heinlein, 1967, p. 416; first published in 1941)
  
  
• "Oh, 'tanstaafl.' Means "There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch." And isn’t,' I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, 'or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her [Tish, a street-kid] that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless" (Heinlein, 1966, p. 164), though Heinlein was drawing on Morrow (1938, p. 2)
  
  
• "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity" (Heinlein, 1967, p. 414). This, published originally in 1941, is one of the earliest known variants of an idea which has become known as Hanlon's razor. The next iteration of this was: "one of the hardest things to believe is the abysmal depth of human stupidity” (Heinlein, 1953, p. 46), followed by, in 1973, the later version: "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" (Heinlein, 1981b, p. 43), which is our favourite. Read more about Hanlon's razor here
  
  
• "Rod... were you born that stupid? Or did you have to study?" (Heinlein, 1955, p. 110) 
  
  
• "There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe" (Heinlein, 1958, p. 16)
  
  
• "To be sure, some humans were always doing silly things — but at what point had prime damfoolishness become commonplace? When, for example, had the zombie-like professional models become accepted ideals of American womanhood?" (Heinlein, 1959, p. 20) 
  
  
• "Deety, never monkey with a system that is working well enough — first corollary of Murphy’s Law" (Heinlein, 1980, p. 187). 
  
  
• "Zeb tended to plan ahead — ‘Outwitting Murphy’s Law,’ he called it, ‘ “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” ’ (Grandma called it “The Butter-Side Down Rule’.)" (Heinlein, 1980, p. 70) 
  
  
• Joel, the lead character, says "'Webb? Wrote a book listing forty-nine possible solutions to Fermi's Paradox—and demolished them one by one, leaving only the fiftieth solution, namely: we're alone?'
  "He [Matty] looked as if he'd chased his lemon with milk. 'Webb was an idiot. His analysis presumed that if other life did exist, it could not be more intelligent than him. It was the characteristic flaw of the entire PreCollapse millennium: the assumption of vastly more knowledge than they actually possessed'." Heinlein & Robinson, 2006, p. 194)
  
  
• And we are a family of compulsive readers, so this had resonance for us: "But I didn’t go to sleep. The truth is, I’ve got a monkey on my back, a habit worse than marijuana though not as expensive as heroin. I can stiff it out and get to sleep anyway [... . But t]he fact is I am a compulsive reader. Thirty-five cents’ worth of Gold Medal Original will put me right to sleep. Or Perry Mason. But I’ll read the ads in an old Paris-Match that has been used to wrap herring before I’ll do without" (Heinlein, 1981a, p. 59)

The power of our human stupidity still reigns supreme. But thank goodness for the word smiths out there that can keep holding the mirror up to us, so we can see ourselves :-)

There will likely be an update on this at some point in the future.

Sam

References:

Heinlein, R. A. (1953). Gulf [1949]. In Assignment in Eternity (pp. 7-67). The New American Library.

Heinlein, R. A. (1955). Tunnel in the Sky. Charles Scribner's Sons.

Heinlein, R. A. (1959). The Year of the Jackpot [1947]. In The Menace from Earth (pp. 7-38). New American Library.

Heinlein, R. A. (1966). The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Heinlein, R. A. (1967). Logic of Empire [1941]. In The Past Through Tomorrow (Vols 1 & 2, pp. 375-422). Berkley Medallion Books (G. P. Putnam's Sons).

Heinlein, R. A. (1977). Have Space Suit, Will Travel (first printing 1958). The Ballantine Publishing Group.

Heinlein, R. A. (1980). The Number of the Beast. NEL (New English Library) Paperback.

Heinlein, R. A. (1981a). Glory Road (first edition 1963). New English Library.

Heinlein, R. A. (1981b). Time Enough for Love: The lives of Lazarus Long (first edition 1974). Berkley Books.

Heinlein, R. A., & Robinson, S. (2006). Variable Star. Tor Books.

Morrow, W. (1938, June 26). Magazine section: Economics in Eight Words. The Oklahoma News, p. 2, column 4.

read more "Some Heinlein quotes part 1"

Tattoos and the sea

I was listening to an old audiobook by Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches (1987), a range of essays linking Dutch narratives, artefacts and culture with an emerging idea of Netherlands nationhood. The book was exploring the South Pacific explorations of the Dutch, with the indigenous people which Dutch seafarers were encountering being "horribly tattooed savages" (p. 28), when I started wondering how and why sailors had become culturally affiliated to tattooing.

When I had time, I decided, I would do a little bit of digging to gain a layperson's idea of how skin ink had transferred from those "savages" to those who work at sea.

The term we use for tattoo today arose from Polynesian tatau meaning "the markings" (Simpson & Weiner, 1989) apparently common across Tahitian, Samoan, Tongan cultures; but in the case of the Marquesas as 'tatu'. It was "recorded from Tahiti as tataou in Bougainville’s Voyage autour du Monde 1766-9 [...] and as tattow in Capt. Cook’s First Voyage July 1769 [with the note that the Eng.] tattoo and F. tatou are perversions of the native name" (p. 666). Apparently Cook noted in the ships journal of his first voyage in 1769 that "Both sexes paint their Bodys, Tattow, as it is called in their Language. This is done by inlaying the Colour of Black under their skins, in such a manner as to be indelible". It seems likely that tattooing travelled out across the Pacific with the waves of migration from China/Taiwan (Evans, 2011).

What I was quite surprised at was how long the idea of permanently marking the skin had been around and where it had arisen. An authority on the history of tattooing, Caplan (2000) explained that, as "one of many forms of irreversible body alteration, including scarification, cicatrization, piercing and branding, [tattooing] is the probably the oldest and most widespread" (p. xi). Apparently "cicatrization" is a more natural scarring process, as opposed to deliberate scarification. So who was tattooed? The "Greeks, Romans and Celts [... mark criminals and slaves"; the "early Christians in Roman territories"; "Christians in the Holy Land, Egypt and the Balkans"; "chastisement [in...] medieval Christendom"; the Picts in northern Britain (Caplan, 2000, pp. xvi-xvii).

It seems at the same time these practices were arising in Asia and the Pacific (Evans, 2011), there was "convict tattooing in Europe, its colonies and Russia", [so while t]he European practice of tattooing [...] did not originate in the Pacific", European nation attitudes to tattooing were changed by what was found in the Pacific, North and South America, Japan, India and the Philippines (Caplan, 2000, p. xvi; Kroupa, 2023). "European sailors had certainly already known and practised tattooing as a result of their relations with other cultures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (Caplan, 2000, p. xvii).

But why sailors? One hypothesis is that tattoos allowed sailors to "avoid colonial exploitation and the slave trade" (more particularly if seafarers were of African origin). Being tattooed created differentiation in what was a "disposable labor" market (Crutcher, 2023, p. 1), where lives were "one of hard work, low pay, grueling physical labor, and little [self] ownership" (p. 3). Where life was that hard at sea, perhaps the wayfaring skill of the Polynesian navigator made tattooing more aspirational; it became a in-trade cultural marker. Tattoos were a visible marker of "the cultural and social identity" of the searfarer (p. 3). And the Polynesian navigators of the Pacific were amazing sailors: not coastal hopping, but crossing broad stretches of a vast ocean largely unknown and unknowable to Europeans; but the stars, by bird and fish migrations, by the clouds, and by the winds.

So to come back to Simon Schama: the amazing seafarers encountered by early European sailors in the Pacific were "tattooed"; but not 'horrible', nor savages. Just different. But definitely tattooed.

Sam

References:

Caplan, J. (Ed.). (2000). Written on the Body: The tattoo in European and American history. Princeton University Press.

Crutcher, M. (2023). Jack Tar’s ink: a comparative analysis of Euro-American and West African sailors’ tattoos during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Maritime Studies, 22(1), 3-x. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-022-00291-0

Evans, J. (2011). Polynesian navigation and the discovery of New Zealand. Oratia Media Ltd.

Kroupa, S. (2022). Reading beneath the Skin: Indigenous Tattooing in the Early Spanish Philippines, ca. 1520–1720. The American Historical Review, 127(3), 1252-1287. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhac218

Schama, S. (1987). The Embarrassment of Riches: An interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age. Audible.

Simpson, J. A., & Weiner, E. S. C. (Eds.) (1989). Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., Vol XVII Su-Thrivingly). Clarendon Press.

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A model for combining client assessments

As career practitioners, we need to think about what assessment tools may be useful for our clients; and which may not. We also need to consider which tools fit with our personal career philosophy; and which may not. And we must to think about which we are experienced enough in to deliver meaningfully to our client; and which we are not. These sound like simple decisions, but balancing others and self are key aspects to having an authentic career practice.

Analyse needs. Then there are a range of considerations when bringing it all together in a practice session. Most practice sessions begin with a chat, with inviting the client to tell us about themselves, why they have come to see us, and what they are aiming to get out of the session. In career practice the session is all about the client - a Rogerian approach (1942; read more here). As we analyse needs, we need to not only understand what the client's desires are, but what they may not yet know they need help with. We may quietly run through a model such as the DOTS - aka SODI/SODA - framework (Laws & Watts, 1977; read more here), mentally checking through judicious use of questioning whether the client has a good awareness of themselves; understands transitions; is aware of opportunities available to them; and is able to make decisions about how to make those opportunities manifest. And when we are experienced in our field, we can hone in on potential gaps surprisingly quickly. We aim to work out what is important to the client, and what cultural and sociological factors shape the client's sense of self (Osborn & Zunker, 2016), and this is not about us: it is about them. If we are less culturally familiar with the client's social/cultural group, we may need to tease out a range of ideas to establish the client's comfort-, challenge- and barrier-levels are, and what type of work is off limits for socio-cultural or disability reasons (e.g. an alcoholic working in a brewery). Then we summarise back to the client what we have heard, to double-check that this is what they are wanting to achieve (Osborn & Zunker, 2016). 

As part of the needs analysis, we may need to also explore anything else we have picked up on, where we wonder if the client may not yet know that they will need help with to meet their goals. More judicious questioning, listening, reframing. We gain a clearer picture, and build a relationship. We check that the client is happy (Osborn & Zunker, 2016).

Purpose of the Assessment. Now we have a much clearer idea of what the client is aiming to achieve, and begin running through our list of tools to consider what may help the client get closer to their goal. This is effectively where we "rummage through our stock room" looking for potential solutions. We may suggest possibilities to the client of both qualitative and quantitative career assessments to test how receptive they are to working with different tools, or whether the client has experienced similar types in the past. If tools have been used in the past, we are likely to explore how useful those were, and whether the client found the results to be accurate or not. As we are going through this process, we will mentally be crossing some tools off, and moving others higher on our 'possible' list (Osborn & Zunker, 2016). We double-check that whatever we aim to use will get the client closer to their stated goal. 

Decide on Assessments. We may end up with one or a few of the following:

1. a list of "getting to know ourselves" lenses if the client is needing self-awareness help (Osborn & Zunker, 2016)
2. transition tools and techniques to help our client move from one career into another
3. job search skills, CV, application letter, and informational interviewing to help our client see new opportunities available to them
4. economic factors to explore, family discussions and decision-making processes to help the client make decisions about changes of direction or retraining.

Results. We help the client to use and explore the tools. We check to see if the outcome was what the client wanted. We plan next steps (Osborn & Zunker, 2016). 

Repeat. We may see the client once: we may see them many times. We keep checking in with them to be sure that we are still focusing on what they want to achieve (Osborn & Zunker, 2016). We may refer on because our results were not what the client wanted (Nelson, 2014). 

Sam

References:

Law, B. & Watts, A. G. (1977). Schools, Careers and Community: A study of some approaches to careers education in schools. Church Information Office.

Nelson, M. (2014). 30 Tips for New Career Counselors. National Career Development Association (NCDA). https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/5417/_self/layout_details/fals

Osborn, D. S., & Zunker, V. G. (2016). Using Assessment Results for Career Development (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Rogers, C. R. (1942). Counseling and psychotherapy: newer concepts in practice. Houghton Mifflin.

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