Are Australia's Vice-Chancellors Politically Partisan or Trepidant? (August 5, 2005)

    Griffith University's Higher Education Policy Analyst, Gavin Moodie enjoys controversy. Last May he opined in The Australian  "SCIENCE and innovation are likely to win a continuation of the level of funding set for the last year of Backing Australia's Ability in 2005, but vice-chancellors' fanciful bid for extra funding will not succeed." He was referring to the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee's goal of 2% of GDP for R&D by 2010, 3% by 2020, a goal far below targets set by Australia's cohort nations. What was disturbing was not the probability that he was right but the tenor of his article, one of abject resignation together with his disinterest in referring to Australia's peers.

Now (The Australian, August 4) he admonishes the AVCC for being politically partisan, i.e. in the Coalition camp because, "THERE is no problem with Labor's higher education policy being implemented in 2005. There's no financial problem, there's no administrative problem and there's no political problem." And he points to the following set of figures:

In short according to Moodie's sums, higher education would score an additional $878 million or 63% through Labor's published policy.

Nevertheless various of the vice-chancellors have put forward arguments based on financial assessments and administrative constraints against reversing the policies promulgated in the Higher Education Support Bill, 2003. Moodie shows why in his view the arguments are specious -- HECS fee increases would give rise to very modest revenue increases: and full fee paying students would place additional financial burdens on institutions virtually negating increases in revenue. Moodie then concludes, "...vice-chancellors are appearing increasingly partisan barrackers for the Coalition. Vice-chancellors' poorly disguised support for the Coalition can therefore be safely ignored by Labor, as it seems to be doing."

That the vice-chancellors as a group would be so politically one-eyed as to deliberately short change the institutions for which they are responsible is difficult to countenance. Rather their behaviour brings to mind observations by Robbie Burns, "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,/ O, what a panic's in thy breastie!" and Hillaire Belloc, "His Father, who was self-controlled,/ Bade all the children round attend/ To James's miserable end,/ And always keep a-hold of Nurse/ For fear of finding something worse."