Little Insight on How to Create a World Class University. (July 30, 2011)

This past Thursday Melbourne's Grattan Institute held an open forum on the topic How to Create a World Class University featuring the University of Oxford's vice-chancellor Professor Andrew Hamilton.

Joining him were Universities Australia Chair, vice-chancellor of The University of Melbourne, Professor Glyn Davis, Professor Margaret Gardner, Vice-Chancellor, RMIT University and Professor Judith Brett, Head of the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University.

The Australian sent Andrew Trounson to report on the august proceedings and he did come away with some memorable quotes:

Oxford's Professor Hamilton: "We have seen considerable over-emphasis on the private benefit of higher education and we have lost sight of the immense public benefit that comes from an educated citizenry," and he noted that in times of policy change, whether in Britain or Australia, it was key that universities focus on excellence, "There are dangers in transitioning to new funding models, there will be a temptation to cut corners, there will be temptations to try to do things on the cheap, and there is a danger that quality will suffer."

Melbourne's Glyn Davis, an advocate for partial fee deregulation, once again voiced his objections to the government's uniform funding mechanism for Australia's universities: "It is an outcome I suspect that suits the national temperament... It seems less public policy than national temperament that defines the possible. Australians are occasionally proud of their universities, but there is no groundswell of popular opinion demanding world-class universities... Where is the anxiety about rankings that you hear in Korea, China and France? Why do we not hear more from successful people, whose education has made possible their careers, calling for greater support for the sector?"

On the other hand RMIT vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner appears not be in entire agreement with her husband: "Listen up, policymakers -- for Australia, it should be a world-class university system, not world-class universities... that should be their goal."

Mr Trounson's  article doesn't relate what contribution Professor Brett made to the form discussion.

One matter that was not brought up was the approach the government has to university research funding and it ought to be, because of its over emphasis on placing the majority of it in the hands of university administrations rather than the researchers themselves. The bar graph below is taken from the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research's Australian Innovation System Report 2011 (page 15), with TFW adding the figures for the relative percentages.

Quite apart from any other considerations, as long as the imbalance of some 2½ fold of block funding relative to competitive grants continues, there is no way Australian Universities can aspire to world excellence.