Universities — Hunting of an Endangered Species — The Minister Stalks His Prey

University vice-chancellor, rector or president -- the guy sitting in the top administrative chair is coming under increasing scrutiny from multiple quarters. Publicly funded universities are soft targets for governments, they control few votes and despite repeated protestations that higher education matters to average voters when it comes time to cast ballots the prospect of tax cuts and federal handouts are of greater importance. Nowhere has it been more apparent that universities are in the gun than in Australia. In 2001when the Prime Minister, John Howard, anointed his new minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, he instructed him, or so Dr Nelson told his audience when he gave the Chalmers Oration, Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide July 17, 2003:

When you become a Cabinet Minister, the Prime Minister writes you ... a Charter Letter. It sets out the Prime Minister's expectations of what you will do and what will be the priorities for you in your portfolio. [I]n relation to Universities, [it] said that I should understand and enunciate the importance of higher education to the Australian community, and I should continue to progress workplace relations reform in the sector." [our emphasis]

Now the government is within a few months of controlling both houses of parliament and Dr Nelson has clearly signalled his intention to bring the university sector to heel.

And legislation removed from his higher education reforms such as  banning compulsory student unionism, extending the use of Australian Workplace Agreements for the employment of academics are back on the agenda. The matter of imposing additional strictures by federal legislation on the  governance of universities is also mooted and is seen to be closely connected with Dr Nelson's expressed desire for the Federal Government to remove legislative control of universities from the states.

It's indicative of how Dr Nelson wants the public to perceive the incompetence of universities and their current administration when he told Peta Donald of the ABC's AM on November 2:

It is not acceptable that we face the future where the most mediocre, disengaged and disillusioned academic is basically paid exactly the same as the one that gets in early, goes home late, and works his or her tail off for the students in the institution.

Clearly Dr Nelson wants to leave us with the impression  the universities hotbeds of featherbedding and boondoggling - so now "it's no more mister nice guy" he's pulling on on his muscle shirt and will get them to straighten up and fly right.
 

Dorothy Illing, in Wednesday's Australian, reports, "Last month he wrote to all vice-chancellors citing 'growing community concern' about [course closures in specialist areas with low enrolments].  'I will be including an additional condition of grant in funding agreements that will specify that closures of specialist courses must be negotiated and agreed with the commonwealth.'"

John Hay, Vice-Chancellor of Queensland University in a very considered response told Illing:

 while he had not seen the detail [of Dr Nelson's repost concerning course closures], it could mean "extremely bureaucratic intervention. With about 6000 courses UQ is regularly introducing new courses and closing others."   
     Closing a course was not a decision that was made lightly. Further, a raft of factors such as teaching capacity, demand, research opportunities, and community need were all taken into account when considering such a move, [Professor Hay] said.

Shortly after Dr Nelson was anointed as Minister for Education, Science and Training he set a goal of making at least on Australian the equivalent of a "Harvard". He hasn't mentioned that for some time.

Now that he is into his fourth year in the job it seems fair to ask: with all the reviews, rhetoric and arrogant head kicking, has the minister brought improvement to the academic prowess of Australia's university sector as regards contributions to learning and research?

On balance, we don't think so, anything but, and we suspect he doesn't care. That universities ought to be the fountainheads of research, particularly basic research, and repositories of learning seems to be an old fashioned view. Perhaps appropriate to the med-twentieth century and before, but not to today's neoconservative world presided over by the current-self-proclaimed-idealist Minister for Education, Science and Training.

Not until the universities can get constituents of influential parliamentarians to believe that reinvigorating the sector is essential for their well being, that of their children and the nation as a whole, as occurred with the coming of the peace following World War II, will there be a reversal of the fortunes of Australia's higher education system.

Dr Nelson can cherry pick statistics as much as he wants, it doesn't alter the fact that we are being left behind by our cohort nations.

Alex Reisner

The Funneled Web