When More Equals Less. (July 8, 2006)

    While the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, continues to espouse the reduction of the number of all purpose universities and proclaims that "...universities have particular strengths that they should play to," Dorothy Illing in The Australian reports, "More universities will be created in Australia after state and federal governments agreed yesterday to create a new class of specialist institution. ...And the term 'university college' will see a resurgence [a] P-plate version of institutions on their way to full university status."

What has been suggested is that specialist "universities" such as a mining university, a university of performing arts or an agriculture university could be in the national pool of higher education operators of the future.

More meaningless prattle, for the fact of the matter is that no minister of education, state or federal, will be prepared to prescribe which of the current 38 public universities will specialize and if so in what and how. That was exemplified by the exchange of July 6 between the ABC's Maxine McKew and Ms Bishop:

McKew:  [T]he Government has been talking about the need for diversity for some time [but] it's taken one of the top universities to really separate itself out from the pack as Melbourne appears to be doing.

 

Minister Bishop: [W]ell, that's the better outcome. [O]ther universities have particular strengths that they should play to.

What appears most likely is that the Federal Government will continue to reduce its ratio of funding for the university sector and will use more or less arbitrary criteria for funds distribution. The universities in turn will cut costs commensurate with how hard they're squeezed and in a manner which will maximize their profit margin or if you're a pessimist minimize their losses.

That in turn will have little to do with what may have been those areas which had the best performing staff but rather who is the cheapest to run when using a short term cost benefit analysis.

It foretells a grim picture for the future of the nation's universities and their input for the nation's benefit.