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It May be Moving from a Disaster into a Nightmare, but is it a Crisis? |
"[To] those of you who argue from the higher education sector that there is a crisis, can I just say to you, please desist at that kind of language... If you want to see a crisis, have a look at school attendance by Aboriginal Australians in Arnhem Land: 25-54%. If you want to see a crisis in education, consider that only 16 of 378 Aboriginal children outside of Darwin and Alice Springs can pass a basic year 3 reading test." [Dr. Brendan Nelson, to the AAS, May 2th]
"I said to the Academy of Science on Thursday night, whilst I understand that people in the sector speak of a crisis, of crises, I just repeat again, the university sector has $20 billion of fixed assets available to it, $4.4 billion in liquid assets, $10.4 billion in revenues this year - almost $2 billion increase over the past 5 years. The borrowings of the sector at $426 million which is 2% of asset value. That is not to suggest in any way that there aren't problems, and indeed in a relative sense serious problems facing the higher education sector, I wouldn't be here talking to you today if I didn't think there were problems to be addressed. But higher education disengages itself from where the average everyday Australian is, when it speaks about a crisis. The people whose hard work funds the $6.1 billion of public funds going into universities this year, it's frequently removed from low incomes, from small business people working their tails off to survive, who are living in parts of Australia where entire industries have changed, where in the process of change many people have found themselves displaced from work and retraining, partly due to your hard work, I might add, for new careers. If you want to talk about a crisis, I would suggest that for a start, where only a quarter of Aboriginal Australians in some parts of Arnhem Land attend school, I put that in the crisis category. When only 16 of 378 Aboriginal kids outside Darwin or Alice Springs can pass a basic year 3 reading test, I put that in the crisis category." [Dr. Brendan Nelson to the NPC, May 8th]
While Dr. Nelson's first discussion paper listed a number of references and had
two pages of recommended reads, the short excerpt below comes from a recent
compilation which was neither a reference nor recommended for reading.
"More recently, however, ideas such as academic freedom,
collegiality and university autonomy have been undermined, especially after the
changes introduced by John Dawkins in the late 1980s. The Dawkins Unified
National System functionally eliminated any distinction between universities and
CAEs. Wholesale amalgamations were therefore ordered, in the interests of
effectiveness and efficiency.
"In almost all Australian universities professorial or academic boards have been
replaced by a top-down managerial system. Bessant uses the University of Sydney,
Queensland University of Technology, La Trobe University and the University of
Queensland to illustrate his case. Bessant concludes that criticisms that
traditional universities were elitist, hierarchical, unresponsive and
individualistic are either myths or justifications for economic rationalism...
"Dawkins had set in motion a process that, by the mid-1990s, saw most university
administrations operating under an alien agenda. The Howard Government, on
taking power in 1996, quickly delivered the coup de grace. Already tight
budgets were slashed to the extent that the only way universities could survive
was by naked commercialisation. By 1996, a proper university system in Australia
had virtually ceased to exist. While more students than ever before were
entering degree and higher degree programmes, and research was still being done,
all were dancing to a commercial tune, not to an academic one." [From the
introductory chapter of
The
Subversion of Australian Universities edited by John Biggs and
Richard Davis, February 2002]
And then there is an Israeli viewpoint on the place of universities in a
nation's structure.
"[I]t should be kept in mind that the development of a high
quality scientific department takes many years, in general, because only
scientists of high quality are able to put together a department of high
quality. Therefore, when a prominent scientist leaves a university department
(usually abroad), double damage is caused, because mediocrity is
self-perpetuating. In the academic world of Western research universities, the
quality of the academic faculty in the humanities, social sciences, the
sciences, medicine, and technology, is measured primarily in scientific
achievements. This measure is closely related to the quality of teaching. The
latter is measured, above all, in the quality of the subject matter taught and
in the thought process the lecturer presents to the students; the quality of
presentation is always secondary to the above. Scientific research is an
indispensable and inseparable part of teaching. A teacher who is not engaged in
research cannot keep up with the rapid development of science or technology in
his field. The contact with developments is maintained by reading the scientific
literature. Teachers who left research cannot keep up with the current
professional literature, and while their contact with the scientific reality is
severed, they stay chained to what they acquired while still active in research.
Such a teacher not only proffers on the students obsolete science, but also is a
barrier to all teaching innovations in his/her field. The enforcement by
legislation of the proposed academic restructuring of universities will cause a
long-range damage to the scientific and technological infrastructure of Israel."
[From the Position Paper of
the Inter-Senate Committee of the Universities for the Protection of Academic
Independence, consisting of representatives of the seven Israeli
universities, March 20th]
Last June now retired president of Harvard, Neil Rudenstine, passed some casual
comments to a group of Harvard students which wound up in the British press (a
UK journo on a Harvard scholarship was among the group). Rudenstine summed up
the state of British higher education as moving from "a disaster into a
nightmare". That ought to qualify as a crisis. Of course Dr. Nelson might argue
that Australian academe is significantly better off than that of the U.K. but
he'd be hard pressed to make a case. And the U.K. like Canada, Ireland and the
"mainland" EC nations appear to be serious about upping the proportion of GDP
earmarked for research and development, talking up the figure of 3% by the end
of the decade, while Mr. Howard and his government make it quite clear that in
their opinion such a commitment by Australia would be unsustainable.
Would it be relevant to ask the Minister and former general practitioner if an
outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a crisis, but the mounting incidence and
death rate from HIV/AIDS in Africa is not? Surely, of all individuals a
physician recognises that an increasing frequency of an insidious chronic infection
leading irrevocably to ominous consequences is a crisis? And has any academic of
consequence argued that the plight of Aboriginal children's education -- as well
as their health -- is not a crisis? Perhaps the Minister for Education and
former GP might acknowledge that it is also a disgrace.
Alex Reisner
The Funneled Web