Lifelong learning for everyone – free public access to educational resources

Tertiary Foundation Certificate

The Tertiary Foundation Certificate (TFC) is a one-year, full-time bridging programme designed for domestic students who missed out on University Entrance (UE) or who want to build up their academic skills and confidence before committing to a degree.

The TFC is fees-free for New Zealand citizens and permanent residents – and has been since 2024. It is open to both school-leavers and mature-age learners. Students can study for the TFC at the University’s City Campus, Tai Tonga Campus (South Auckland) and the Tai Tokerau Campus (Whangārei).

Upon successful completion, participants gain a nationally recognised University Entrance qualification.

Find out more about the Tertiary Foundation Certificate.

Members of the public can attend regular University lectures, free of charge, as observers, through the University Lecture Course Programme, run by Public Programmes. Participants do not attend tutorials, sit assessments or access course websites – a low-stress learning environment.

Semester Two 2026 courses open to the public included ANCIENT 102 Ancient Greek History; CRIM 100 Big Ideas in Criminology; PACIFIC 105 The Contemporary Pacific; HISTORY 104; Pacific History; and ENV 102 Social and Environmental Change.  

Te Tumu Herenga | Libraries and Learning Services

Our libraries – free to visit, no membership needed

Anyone can visit University of Auckland libraries free of charge during staffed opening hours. You do not need to be a student or a library member. You can use the study desks and furniture, the library catalogue and the open-shelf collections – in all of our library and learning spaces.

In Te Herenga Mātauranga Whānui, the General Library, you can also access additional collections and spaces:

• Theses from the On-Demand Collection, viewed in the Reading Room
• Rare books, manuscripts, archives and other items from He Māra Mahara | Cultural Collections, viewed in the Reading Room (Level M, General Library, Monday to Friday 11am–4.30pm; booking a day ahead recommended)
• The Microtexts Room (Level G, General Library), with no booking needed

ReoSpace – free te reo Māori sessions

ReoSpace is a te reo Māori space on Level 1 of the General Library. It is open to manuhiri (visitors), as well as staff and students, from absolute beginners to fluent speakers. It runs three free two-hour sessions a week, 12–2pm, during the 12 weeks of each semester:

• Mahitoi Mondays: express your creativity and learn about toi Māori (Māori arts)
• Tākaro Tuesdays: practise your reo through a Māori language card game
• Waiata Wednesdays: practise your reo through song

Free exhibitions

He Māra Mahara | Cultural Collections holds free exhibitions open to the public in the General Library exhibition space (Level M), Monday to Friday, 11am–4.30pm. Recent exhibitions in 2026 include:

• Sharing wisdom: how Māori and Chinese communities in Aotearoa have preserved and shared knowledge
• Evergreen: over a century of botanical paintings and 3D plant models
• Standing tall: a century of the ClockTower: the design, construction and life of an anchor-point and icon of Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.

Anyone, anywhere, can read University of Auckland research and theses online free of charge, with no login or membership required.

ResearchSpace: open-access theses and publications

ResearchSpace is the University's open-access research repository. It holds:

• Doctoral theses and masters theses, which are open by default, unless the author requests an embargo
• Journal articles, books and book chapters, reports and conference papers by University researchers

ResearchSpace content is also searchable through Google and DigitalNZ.
Search ResearchSpace

Institutional Figshare – open research data

Institutional Figshare is the University's open repository for research data and creative works. Anyone can view and download published datasets, code, figures, images, sound recordings and video, each with a permanent Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
Browse University of Auckland Figshare

Open Educational Resources

The University supports open educational resources (OERs): teaching and learning materials that are free to access and openly licensed (usually Creative Commons) for anyone to reuse, adapt and share.

Libraries and Learning Services’ Open Educational Resources Guide is free to use with no login, and shows anyone how to find, use and create OERs, including free open textbooks and course materials.

New Zealand Plants website – a free online learning resource

The University supports public access to botanical knowledge through the New Zealand Plants website, which presents over 7,500 detailed, captioned photographic images of more than 800 native plants, together with relevant learning resources.

Curated and hosted by Waipapa Taumata Rau, it is open to anyone (no login needed), and designed for conservation groups, communities, teachers, school students and those who want to learn more about Aotearoa’s native ecosystem. Contents include:

• Coverage of mosses, liverworts, clubmosses, ferns, conifers and flowering plants
• Searches by photograph, common name, genus, family or growth form
• A timeline of New Zealand plant history, animations and further reading