If You're Gonna Have an Education Revolution Don't Forget the Bureaucracy. (March 27, 2008)

left - Andrew Brennan,   right - Jeff Malpas

Andrew Brennan and Jeff Malpas, Professor of Philosophy at LaTrobe University and Professor of Philosophy and ARC Professorial Fellow at the University of Tasmania respectively, in an online opinion piece for ABC News remind us that last December they: "organised and published an open letter to Mr Rudd - one supported by over 300 senior academics and calling on the Government to take its promise of an 'education revolution' into higher education - so we are gratified to see Ministers Gillard and Carr acting in such a positive fashion. But there are some issues that still worry many academics, and two of these deserve special attention."

What perturbs professors Brennan and Malpas are the announcements of reviews by Senator Carr as Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research and Ms Gillard as Minister of Education that suggest the two ministers mayn't be pulling the higher education wagon in the same direction: "Mr Carr's emphasis was clearly on scholarship and research, there was a focus in Ms Gillard's announcement on vocational training and skills shortages."

But as Denise Bradley, the former vice-chancellor of the University of South Australia and Chair of Ms Gillard's review points out, the terms of reference can be seen as broad, so we really don't know just what the review will will cover, after all that 2001 Senate review which found the university sector to be in crisis was signed by all the Labor Senators on the review committee.

The professors of philosophy write: "One crucial question is whether the increasing emphasis on training over the last decade, and the resulting tendency for a rather limited training-oriented mentality to be extended to all forms of university teaching, has damaged Australia's higher education system in general." and certainly during the "Howard years" the universities have felt increasing pressure to be seats of training at the expense of learning and fundamental research.

They also applaud: "Both Ministers Gillard and Carr [for having] pledged to reverse the crude anti-intellectualism that characterised the previous Federal Government's dealings with universities... The simple truth is that modern technologically-oriented societies depend critically upon the high-level research and teaching that is undertaken in universities and associated organisations."

Professors Brennan and Malpas then get to an issue that the Rudd government has pussy-footed around 'til now: "A key issue in our December letter was the bureaucratic and administrative impositions on universities over recent years, and the resulting erosion of academic standards under the impact of changing management regimes, half-baked policy initiatives, and top-heavy bureaucracy... where academic staff... view themselves as managed by the incompetent and audited by the ignorant. This is the second major problem the government faces in bringing about a real education revolution.

    "A central claim of the December letter was that an essential step in addressing the current higher education crisis will be to reform the bloated and costly higher education bureaucracy, and the naive and outdated policy frameworks that go with it... the fact that currently more than 50 per cent of university budgets are spent on administration is the surest indication of just how dysfunctional the system has become."

Now if that doesn't sound like a clarion call for a clear thinking razor gang their never was one.

It'll be interesting to watch to see if Professors Brennan and Malpas' call to cure the administrative bloat resonates with Ms Gillard, Senator Carr and their Cabinet colleagues and to what effect.