Maxine McKew Asks Good Questions and Gets Mostly Non-Answers. (July 7, 2006)

 Last night the redoubtable Maxine McKew fronting the ABC's Lateline program interrogated Melbourne University Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis and Minister for Education, Science and Training Julie Bishop with regard to "the issues now facing the higher education sector and in particular, the implications that flow from the adoption of the new Melbourne University model."

What followed was by and large a exercise in hand waving and sidestepping.

In response to Ms McKew's question as to why this change from the Scottish form of university to an American one, Professor Davis replied, "The things that made us [Melbourne University] great, have changed fundamentally in Australia. It's not the same world we were part of. And we have to change to remain competitive, and retain the position that we're privileged to hold. ...Higher education is on the move - it is changing dramatically. And the world, as it emerges in the next five years, will be very different from the one that we've all been used to and that we've all been conditioned by. So it's important to understand the way the world's going, and then to frame your strategy against those changes."

You might have expected a bit of supporting detail in order to get some idea of what in particular he was talking about, but it didn't eventuate.

Ms Bishop demonstrated she was equally adept at hand gestures. "[B]roadly speaking I support the path Melbourne is heading down, because I support diversity amongst our higher education providers. ...I believe that in order for us to remain internationally competitive, we need to ensure that there's broad diversity in the higher education sector... that they play to their strengths, that they do what they're best at doing. ...universities have to think creatively and innovatively about how they can attract students. ...our universities are having to compete internationally, so we have to ensure that they are the very best that they can be in their areas of strength."

Was there mention at any time of increasing resources?

Well, no.

Then Professor Davis in reply to Ms McKew asking about the recasting of the curriculum at Melbourne said, "You're right, we're making very significant changes. This is drawn from our point of view from pedagogic incentives. This is about a better education model. That's what's driving our changes. One of the problems with just saying, 'Let's have undergraduate degrees and then graduate degrees,' is that there has been significant fragmentation in the curriculum. There isn't a lot of coherence necessarily in the undergraduate curriculum, and undergraduate degrees don't necessarily articulate strongly into graduate school."

Of course just adopting a US style system won't solve the problem of appropriate undergraduate teaching as the Howard Hugh's Medical Institute led by Thomas Cech forcefully and constructively points out.

Ms Bishop than gave a concise explanation of what she sees are a university's raison d'être, "[W]hat I think we need to focus on is ensuring that our universities educate people, educate students who are employable, who have skills for employment in a knowledge-based economy. And so we need our students to be educated. We need them to be educated to a high level. But also, so that when they graduate they have skills that make them employable and our universities go on to create new knowledge, which adds to Australia's innovation and competitiveness."

Good. Now about that last bit, and our universities go on to create new knowledge, which adds to Australia's innovation and competitiveness. Well, no there still wasn't any suggestion that any increase in resources was being contemplated.

Getting back to diversity Ms McKew said, "[T]he Government has been talking about the need for diversity for some time and it's interesting that, in fact, it's taken one of the top universities to really separate itself out from the pack as Melbourne appears to be doing."

The Minister for EST replied, "[W]ell, that's the better outcome. "[O]ther universities have particular strengths that they should play to. ...universities need to look at what they are offering, to look at how competitive they are. ...how they can attract and retain students and quality staff. ...organic growth in the diversity discussion is healthier than a top-down direction from government."

Makes you wonder if the Minister for EST has a clue but that might be unkind. You can judge from her following remark. "[T]here might be synergies that are quite obvious that are not happening until we start having this diversity debate. There might be amalgamations that ought to take place, not necessarily for financial reasons - although that might be one of them. It could be because of a commonality of interests. It's about serving the interests of students so they receive a high-quality education. There are many different ways of doing this. I was in the United States recently, and the United States has an extraordinary array of higher education institutions and I'd like to see that level of diversity at least in the Australian context, here. And Melbourne's leading the way in one area. But I believe our regional universities will also have the opportunity to play to their strengths."

There followed a rather lengthy discussion about national accreditation for universities replacing accreditation by the states -- one of those matters the government likes to bring up because it distracts the "stakeholders" from issues such as crumbling infrastructure, chronic under-funding and inadequate staffing.