Editorial-30 January 2004

 

 

A Continuing Descent into the Maelstrom

 

 

The path of the Australian university system since its inception in 1850 is unique – its first four institutions having been founded while the continent was occupied by separate colonies. Not until eight years after federation into a commonwealth of states was the nation’s fifth university created.  However, in certain respects Australia’s university reforms from 1988 have shown the way for other nations. The introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) is being used as an example by the United Kingdom’s Labour Government and the Republic of South Africa is in the process of merging its 21 universities and 15 technikons (polytechnics, similar to Australia’s former colleges of advanced education). Most of South Africa’s major universities will be spared reformation by the government's plan, but it will reduce the existing 36 tertiary institutions to 23 – 11 universities, six technikons and six new hybrid institutions to be formed by merging universities and technikons.

 

Australia’s universities really came of age following the end of the second World War in 1945. Not until then did they begin to award doctorates and begin to make their presence felt internationally as research institutions. By 1951 the Commonwealth government contributed 24% of university income, state governments 52% while Australian students contributed 19%; the rest came from investments, small endowments and other income. Little changed from the viewpoint of the relative proportions of income until EG Whitlam’s Labor government reached an agreement with the states in 1973 whereby student fees were to be abolished and the Commonwealth government assume the states’ burden for funding the tertiary institutions, although each state retained control of the legislation dealing with its universities.

 

Even though the Whitlam government was replaced  in 1975 by a conservative coalition led by Malcolm Fraser, little change in the universities’ income structure occurred until the Hawke Labor government, which had ousted Fraser in 1983, was into its second term in 1987.

 

One of the most powerful consequences by virtue of its overwhelming control of universities’ incomes (some 84% in 1987) and quite probably not considered by Whitlam, was that all Commonwealth governments subsequent to his

The conservative coalition has used the centralization of funding introduced by Whitlam, together with the tools developed by John Dawkins, and converted them into weapons to steadily reduce government commitment to support Australia’s university sector.

 would have de facto control of Australia’s public universities. The economic rationalism of the Hawke government’s Treasurer, Paul Keating (he followed Bob Hawke as Prime Minister in 1991) and the Minister for Employment, Education and Training, John Dawkins, together with the perception by many Labor ministers and backbenchers that the universities must become more egalitarian and shed their perceived elitism, led to the abandonment of the binary tertiary educational system in Australia of universities and colleges of advanced education. Although in theory all of the 37 public universities that were the eventual outcome of the amalgamations and mergers were equal, some are in fact more equal than others, in particular the eight universities that eventually formed the Group of Eight which receives the bulk of research grants' resources from the two major federal granting agencies. However, the equivalent of the liberal arts colleges which flourish in the United States, and together with the research universities form a most useful “binary system”, does not exist in Australia. In addition university endowments are all but nonexistent, and the government’s commitment when assessed as a proportion of its tax revenue is in steady decline and is so marked that the increased student fees being charged do not compensate, let alone redress, the problems engendered by  underfunding.

 

The conservative coalition has used the centralisation of funding introduced by Whitlam and its potential for intimidation together with the tools developed by John Dawkins which in scraping the “binary system” brought with it the ascendancy of the CAEs corporate management style, and converted them into weapons to steadily reduce government commitment to support Australia’s university sector. And it has accelerated the drive for the universities to become market driven which is reflected in their touting for contracts from the private sector – not of itself deleterious, but when it reduces institutions’ commitment to fundamental research and may cause conflicts of interest, it is cause for concern. As part of the  urge to market, the universities have been strongly encouraged to enroll full fee paying students and to actively seek overseas student enrollments, and they have done so successfully. But an institution that is market driven is looking to its bottom line and which of its “products” are profitable and which are not. Issues of what may be for the public good or what in a longer view will be of benefit to the nation can be lost in the rush for immediate gain. In Australia’s university sector this is reflected by a steady reduction in support for both research and teaching in the enabling sciences. For example schools of business and courses in demand by full fee paying local and overseas students, are being enhanced at the expense of support for mathematics, physics and chemistry. A recent example of the problems which have developed is the plea by Australia’s Chief Statistician. On 11 July, 2003 he called a meeting of statistical scientists from industry, government and the universities, motivated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ inability to find the mathematical statisticians it requires to analyse Commonwealth government data on Australia's industry, society and community. Eli Lilly's representative at the meeting reported that his company is experiencing comparable problems, and as a result, its US office may shelve the company's plans for growth in Australia. These problems afflict industry and government across the nation. Professor Hyam Rubinstein, Chair of Melbourne University's Department of Mathematics and Statistics in his submission to the government’s "Crossroads" review pointed out in June 2002:

The Mathematical Sciences are in steep decline in Australia... Some stark figuresof the 16 professors of mathematics and statistics at La Trobe, Monash and Melbourne Universities in 1995, 10 have now left - 5 have gone to prestigious overseas jobs, and the remaining 5 have either moved to administrative positions, retired or one has moved to an academic position at the ANU. This year it is planned to refill 3 of these 10 positions, the remaining have been lost. There are now as many vacant professorships of statistics in the major universities as filled positions.

Finally, from the viewpoint of  Australia’s major research universities, their research infrastructure is in decay and the situation is still not being redressed a decade after it was first documented and quantitated. Thus far neither Labor nor the conservative coalition is prepared to significantly increase and differentiate funds to redress the problem. Unless and until the major political parties are prepared to develop and maintain an incisive bipartisan policy, and to date there has been no inclination from them to do so, the situation will continue to corrode. Because Australia is a federation of states it would be possible for a state, were it sufficiently motivated, to develop a program to significantly upgrade its research universities, but so far none has utilised the revenue mechanisms available to it to do so.

 

John Dawkins initiated Australia’s National Unified System to replace the so-called "binary system" of universities and colleges of advanced education, thereby ushering in a mediocracy of higher education from which Australia has yet to recover.

 

 

Alex Reisner

The Funneled Web