Feisty Former President of the AVCC Reckons It's Past Its Used-by Date. (August 24, 2005)

    Sir Bruce Williams, Vice-Chancellor, The University of Sydney (1967-1981), President of the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (1972 - 1974), Boyer Lecturer (1982) has just had his latest book published, Making and Breaking Universities: Memoirs of Academic Life in Australia and Britain 1936 - 2004.

At the book launch Professor Williams told Bernard Lane of The Australian, "The trouble with the AVCC is that it's got so large and there are so many different interests involved."

In Making and Breaking Universities Professor Williams calls for an independent universities commission to be formed which should advise the government on higher education policy and offer critical comment. "I think that's become doubly important because since the Dawkins changes [the 1988 unified national system] the federal minister has become in effect director-general of higher education and that's dangerous."

Considering the machinations of Brendan Nelson as Minister for Education, Science and Training, Professor Williams would be ill advised to hold his breathe in anticipation.

He was particularly scathing of the new league table used to distribute money for teaching and learning. "An example of stupidity which a universities commission would be able to criticise pretty trenchantly," and opined that AVCC members by virtue of the fact that they would occupy very different positions in the league table, immediately suggests why it would be less effective than a commission in challenging such bureaucratic interference.

Lane also reports:

    In his book, Professor Williams restates his longstanding support for full-cost university fees, with subsidies for domestic students and more generous bursaries for the disadvantaged.

    He told the HES this would allow a radical reform of the federal education department.

    "It's got much too large and it's pushing itself, with the support of the minister, into all sorts of internal university affairs in which it's not likely to have any great expert knowledge," he said.

It'd be interesting to be present were Professor Williams to challenge Dr Nelson on the point of expertness. The minister at the June 2^nd Research Quality Framework Stakeholders Forum told his listeners:

    I've worked out now that my job as your Minister, basically, for Education, Science and Training, is not to be an expert. I've got 1800 people that work for you in my Department who describe themselves as experts, to varying degrees.

    My job, on the other hand, is to hopefully bring some intellectual rigour to the task of making decisions through the prism of what is it that we need in the long term in our country?