The Complexity of Reform: Peter Coaldrake Opines. (July 25, 2011)

Peter Coaldrake, vice-chancellor of the Queensland University of Technology, and immediate  past chair of Universities Australia took time out to write an assessment for Times Higher Education of the reformation of Australian education with the advent in December 2007 of the return of Labor to federal government, "Reforms: so far, so good".

Professor Coaldrake notes: "[T]he reforms were a long way from simply showering the sector with more money. Proposals were put forward for regulation, quality assurance and reward for performance. TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency) was given a mandate to adopt a standards based approach, both academic and non-academic. Excellence in Research for Australia was to be rolled out from 2011. Targets and performance funding for teaching and learning also were to be introduced through negotiated agreements, known as "compacts", between institutions and government... [However,] it is all too easy to underestimate the complexity of reform... great care needs to be exercised to ensure that regulation is proportionate to risk and that university autonomy is not unduly compromised."

Professor Coaldrake goes on to point out that although under consideration over the past two years the make up of TEQSA remains incomplete and: "We have not yet clarified the even more complex details of how academic standards might be scrutinised." Nevertheless, Professor Coaldrake believes "the Australian government has held its nerve in the face of the continuing  post-global financial crisis pressure."

On the other hand the vice-chancellor of QUT is less sanguine with regard to core [base] grant funding for universities, noting it's been shunted to yet another review. And finally, the matter of what we might call the soft money derived from international students has got his wind up: "International education should not be driven by a need to make up domestic funding shortfalls, and increasing management, audit or private-sector competition will not substitute for the need to ensure adequate basic resources for universities."

What Professor Coaldrake does not discuss is the pending straight-jacketing of university research that is being undertaken by the government through its endorsement of Senator Kim Carr's (Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) insidious retrospective research assessment exercise, the ERA.