Australia and a Community College System is Advocated by Melbourne University's V-C Glyn Davis. (November 12, 2008)

The University of Melbourne is currently suffering from the teething pains of being converted to a quasi graduate school with a restricted undergraduate course structure -- the Melbourne Model.

According to the university's website:

The University of Melbourne has introduced landmark educational reforms known collectively as the Melbourne Model. These reforms are designed to create an outstanding and distinctive Melbourne Experience for all students. In moving to the new model, the University is responding to the challenges of today's changing environment as well as aligning itself with the best of European and Asian practice and North American traditions.

However, of equal significance to the reformation of the undergraduate course structure is the proposed redistribution of undergraduate to graduate numbers. According to a university media release on May 14, 2007: "[Student numbers are expected to settle] slightly below 40 000, several thousand below the present student population. The eventual student profile will be 50/50 undergraduate and graduate compared to the current 70/30. The vast majority of places will continue to be CSPs [Commonwealth supported places] with, for example, an anticipated average of 80 per cent CSPs across the graduate schools over the medium term."

In contrast the University of California, Berkeley (SJT ranking = 3) currently has a distribution of undergraduate students: 24,636;  graduate students: 10,317 i.e. 76/24.

Vice-chancellor Davis is really very much out on a limb in creating a chimera and it remains to be seen whether or not it emerges stillborn.

But to return to the present, Glyn Davis in an interview with The Australian's Luke Slattery has called for the creation of a community college network modelled on the California university system. Professor Davis proposal "would combine associate and full degrees with vocational training opportunities, and could be created from the amalgamation of universities and vocational education providers, particularly in rural and regional areas."

Further, "they would not offer research degrees, nor would they compete for competitive research grants. 'I see the Californian community colleges model as an important way to address the important and legitimate needs for higher education provision outside metropolitan Australia. They would also address the need for equity.'"

But Professor Davis' approach is not modelled on California's university system, which is a ternary one not a binary system and consists of 10 University of California (UC) campuses and the 23 California State Universities (CSU), where the latter predominantly offer bachelor and master degrees (but do offer some PhDs). Finally there is the 110 California Community Colleges System offering two-year degrees which can be credited for students who may continue onto UC or CSU institutions.

Were Australia to adopt a system comparable to that of California's but allowing for population difference, we would lay down a ratio of 6 full research universities, 13 state universities and 63 community colleges. 19 would have the right to award PhDs but few would be awarded by the state universities which nevertheless would carry on research and whose staff would compete for research funds. And finally the system would be structured so that students could move from two-year community colleges to the universities if they were qualified to do so.

To suggest that the binary system proposed by Professor Davis is comparable to California's ternary approach is light years from the mark.

That's not to say that a restructuring of Australia's tertiary educational system isn't overdue, and of course, that is what the Bradley Review is about.

Unfortunately, Professor Davis still leaves the impression that there must be a chosen few institutions, but he is at least slightly more subtle than ANU's Ian Chubb.

Mr Slattery concludes his report:

Professor Davis stressed that his vision differed from that of his ANU counterpart in that he did not favour dedicated research grants to specific institutions because it might "kill the incentive for a lot of those institutions to do well" and cement in place an uncompetitive hierarchy.

"In a good system, institutions rise and fall," he said.

Despite their differences, however, Professor Davis conceded that he and Professor Chubb "end up in the same place". Both favoured a select group of properly funded research universities sitting above a system that included specialist post-secondary teaching-only institutions.

For Australia to move to a viable integrated ternary system of tertiary education is a reasonable goal but if it is to be realised it will require careful stepwise development, and to institute rigid criteria (you may do research, you may not) is not only unnecessary, it will be counterproductive.

The blatant self-interest exhibited by some Group of Eight vice-chancellors will be self-defeating, and may well be detrimental to the Bradley Review and damaging to the ultimate response by the federal government.