Monash University's Vice-Chancellor Designate Doesn't Quite Follow the Group of Eight Line. (November 23, 2008)

Edward Byrne (56) takes over Monash University's vice-chancellorship from the retiring Richard Larkins mid next year. Currently Professor Byrne is a vice-provost and head of  University College London's School of Medicine. Prior to that he held the position of dean of medicine at Monash and was the founding director of the Melbourne Neuromuscular Research Unit.

A graduate of the University of Tasmania, where he  received his MBBS with first class honours in 1974, he has combined basic neurological research with a clinical medical career.

In interviews with The Age and The Australian he has been quite forthcoming in his views on aspects of both university research and administrative policy, and on the surface they don't appear to be entirely in agreement with viewpoints expressed by the more outspoken vice-chancellors from Group of Eight.

Professor Byrne told The Australian that he was not in favour of full deregulation of tuition fees, suspecting it would discourage the economically disadvantaged, and he holds the firm belief that creating aspirations at school was key to overcoming the chronic under-representation of low socio-economic groups at university: "By the time young people have left school, if they aren't already inspired, many of them are lost forever to the idea of tertiary education."

Speaking from his UK office he raised concerns about the lack of funding for Australian universities and university research: "Having worked in the UK for the past couple of years, the university sector is much better-funded here. Full economic costing for university research has been in place in the UK for some time, and it makes an enormous difference that one doesn't have to raid the teaching budget or the international student budget to support flat-out research activities. I think that's a must for Australia."

Professor Byrne noted that his priorities include strengthening Monash's regional and international campuses, continuing to differentiate Monash from Melbourne University and working with schools to develop outreach and mentoring programs so that more disadvantaged students have access to a tertiary education.

But he also told journalists that universities should move to a more demand-driven funding model, whereby student places are targeted towards areas with high job demand. Just where this puts the teaching and research of demanding subject areas such as mathematics and the hard sciences wasn't discussed.