News & Views item - March 2010

 

 

The Minister, the Universities, and Those Interim Compacts. (March 24, 2010)

Last Friday afternoon the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr released a 4-page summary of Interim agreements which his department had negotiated with Australia's higher education providers. The spin placed on those agreements by that précis would have made both Clarrie Grimmett and Shane Warne proud. Not only do those interim agreements have no clothes, there's damn all flesh on them.

 

The announcement's timing together with the topic assured that the popular media would allocate next to no coverage of the substance which with a bit of digging could be found in 40 pdf files.

 

The joint media release by Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Senator Carr reads:

 

The universities have responded to the Government’s reform agenda and will use the compacts to position themselves to meet the Government’s higher education objectives and participation targets.

The compacts will allow universities to align their plans with national priorities, including the Government’s goal of 40 per cent of all 25 to 34-year-olds holding a qualification at bachelor level or above by 2025.

The Government welcomes universities’ focus on collaboration as an important step to improving the quality and excellence of research and research training.

Later this year, each university will negotiate a compact with the Government, which will define its individual mission and how it will contribute to the Government’s policy goals, including agreed performance targets.

From 2012, universities that meet their performance targets will share in additional Government funding of $135 million per year.

 

With the publication of today's Higher Education Supplement in The Australian there was recognition of these interim "compacts".

 

Gavin Moodie former Principal Policy Adviser at Griffith University and now Principal Policy Advisor at RMIT University told the HES that compacts -- i.e. agreements negotiated between individual universities and the federal government -- are likely to be swamped by the market-driven funding arrangements in which most money is linked to deregulated student numbers and performance measures. He went on to say the interim compacts seemed little more than a regurgitation of a university's strategic plan and it was difficult to see how the government could drive research concentration through compacts when a university's priorities would be shaped by its competitive performance in the Excellence in Research for Australia initiative.

 

Dr Moodie concluded with the opinion that government departments lacked the research expertise to negotiate with universities on where they should be putting their money.

 

In Lynn Meek's opinion, he is director of the L. H. Martin Institute, compacts would drive differentiation in the sector only if there were scope for individual universities to receive special funding tied to specific missions beyond the suite of funding that all universities contested. "If it got down to that level then I think [compacts] could be strong differentiators."

 

Fat chance.

 

And yet a reasonable summary would be that the administrators of the Group of Eight intend to do just what they are currently about, including The University of Melbourne which is perusing the "Melbourne Model" even though just what it is remains ill defined.

 

 It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the rest are ascribing to their universities the equivalent of "motherhood" statements. They will become bigger, better and even more relevant to their communities than they are now. Just exactly how that will be achieved and funded remains to be expressed. And just what the meaning is to be of "significant differentiation" and how it will be achieved?

 

Perhaps that will be revealed in another joint statement from the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.

 

Or perhaps it will be the subject of another Rudd-Abbott debate where the worm turns.