We're Going to Get Behind All Universities and We're Going to Recognise That There's Diversity in the Mission: Julia Gillard (March 17, 2008)

Discussing her higher education review on the ABC's 7:30 report last week the Federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard told Kerry O'Brien:

We've put the question of funding squarely before the [higher education] review, because we recognise that the former government starved our university sector and we have to deal with the consequences of that in the medium term as a nation.

We are going to spend 2009 in compact negotiations with universities with a view to having the new compact structure up and running in 2010.

I want each university in this country to be globally focused, to be able to hold up its head on the world stage, but in the context of the mission that they've defined for themselves.

A regional university that is specialising in meeting the needs of its local community will be a very different institution from ANU and both can be successful institutions.

Both can be offering a high quality - indeed, world class - education to the people who study there.

 
The OECD average increase in investment up to 2004 was almost 50 per cent. That's for public funding in terms of tertiary education. We went backwards by 4 per cent. We have to look at these challenges for the nation, and that's what the review is for.

Professor Denise Bradley, who will chair the higher education review was to quick to pick up on Ms Gillard's reference to the OECD figures; she told The Australian: "The fact that the minister actually made that statement (about the OECD comparison) is a kind of message."

Professor Bradley went on to say the terms of reference for the review were ample and gave confidence of a searching and independent inquiry: "They're fantastically broad - I was absolutely stunned when I saw a draft of them. It's a view that higher education is extremely important both for social cohesion and for economic prosperity."

In today's Age Frank Jackson a former director of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, who holds a fractional research chair at La Trobe University and is a visiting professor at ANU and Princeton comments that our "unis are between a rock and a hard choice".

Professor Jackson is referring to the worry "that the obvious way to give some universities more money without an overall boost in funding to the sector is to give others less money. But things might not be as bad as [might be feared]. What's crucial is how the redistribution is done."

He goes on to point out what ought to be obvious, that while overall the research capacity of some of our universities are much greater than others, there are outstanding research groups not housed, for example, at one of the Group of Eight.

Already the Federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, has stated that it is not the government's intention to hive off some of our universities to become teaching only institutions. Very well, then it is incumbent on the government not to design a system that will punish groups that are working at universities which are not considered to be part of the research elite.

Professor Jackson also believes it should not be essential that all academic staff undertake research, but here, I believe, he is on shaky ground. University departments when appointing staff do, or should, make undertaking research part of the job description - the appointment is to a university, not a high school. Certainly teaching is also part of the job but being active in research does affect teaching.

I'd suggest that those individuals who advocate that non-research appointments be condoned take a careful look at the good liberal arts colleges in the US to see just how much research is undertaken by their faculty.

In addition to the opinion piece by Frank Jackson, the Age's editorial "You get the universities you are willing to pay for" makes some trenchant observations, pretty well telling the Rudd government to start putting the peoples tax dollar where its mouth is.

So far... the Government has undertaken little that is specific [toward leading an education revolution. But the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who is also Education Minister, evidently accepts that a revolution cannot be built on rhetoric alone.

[Her higher education] review panel's final report, is to concern itself with access to universities, with the delivery of funding and student services, and with the quality of teaching and research.

[However] while the minister was charting this rosy, if still rather hazy, picture of the Government's plans for higher education... The vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Professor Glyn Davis — who is associated with the Rudd Government as convenor of its 2020 summit — told a conference that one of the problems facing Australian universities was that they had undergone too many revolutions.

Just how might such a self-adapting system be created? Professor Davis argues that the comparative strength of the US system lies in its decentralised nature, and that if a similar strength and adaptability is to be acquired in Australia "the link between university budgets and the Commonwealth budget" must be broken, and an intermediary body between the Government and universities should be established. This body would, in effect, acquire responsibility for policy decisions that are now at the discretion of governments.

The Age's editorial, somewhat more politely, comments the equivalent of  "fat chance", and there is always the spectre of a future government turning matters back to a grand mechanism of governmental micromanagement.

Perhaps returning the universities to the states might be considered. They might then compete with one another vying for best in show.