Griffith University VC (Soon to be Melbourne's) Airs His Views on University Reform. (November 10, 2004)

    Before Glyn Davis became Vice-Chancellor of Queensland's Griffith University in 2002 he was Director-General of the Queensland Department of Premier and Cabinet under Peter Beattie. As an academic at Griffith, prior to becoming a public servant, he taught politics and public policy. He will assume the Vice-Chancellorship of Melbourne University in January 2005.

He has now written for The Australian's Higher Education Section some thoughts on the way forward for Australia's universities under the headline "End of the road for Dawkins," and opens with, "In our national unified system, universities are large, typically multi-campus, comprehensive in teaching programs and committed to research." No small or specialised universities or colleges -- we've been Dawkinsised.

Professor Davis argues that is about to end and advises that university administrations can either accept the fact and join in shaping a new university sector or get steamrollered by the Federal government's Minister for Education, Science And Training, Brendan Nelson. He suggests, "They might start by recalling some history. In the year before Dawkins issued his green paper, the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission contemplated reworking the binary divide, perhaps through a new sector of technological universities based on the then institutes of technology." The suggestion was dismissed out of hand by the universities then existing thereby "[ruling themselves] out of the policy equation."

In order to avoid that situation arising again Melbourne's future Vice-Chancellor puts forward the following proposal:

[A] way forward is a regulatory framework that embraces diversity by establishing clear criteria for colleges, teaching universities and research universities. This approach works successfully in the US, where independent commissions ensure rigour and autonomy in accreditation.

    Such policy evolution seems preferable to the emerging policy incoherence, but it requires bargaining rather than fiat from Canberra. It is time for ministers of education from across Australia to resume their conversation about the future of our university system.

Whether or not Professor Davis will be able to persuade the thirty-seven other Vice-Chancellors of Australia's public universities to share his view and form a cohesive party to negotiations is a moot question; it is by no means assured. And whether or not it will get a serious airing at all is also debatable with matters of Australian Workplace Agreements, reduction of the power of student as well as staff unions, alteration of university governance procedures and instituting total Commonwealth control of the public universities seemingly preoccupying the Federal Minister.

Perhaps he'll address those issues in the lecture he's scheduled to give to Melbourne's Department of Politics, "Where Next for Universities in Australia?"