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Cutting the Curricula To the Quick
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Luke Slattery in his article in the September 24 Australian tells his readers that: "A revolution from below is transforming Australian higher education."
The
name of the game is reduction of undergraduate courses first instituted by
The University of Melbourne under vice-chancellor Glyn Davis when he
undertook in 2005 to introduce the "Melbourne Model".
Unfortunately the revolution appears to have distinct overtones of "The Terror" where "reform" of the universities is leading to the deformation of what needs to be rebuilt following the diminution and stagnation of staffing and disintegration of physical infrastructure.
The over reaching issues are being left unaddressed while university administrations manipulate peripheral problems. The principal reason is the lack of a rapprochement between the universities and the federal government. Without the injection of resources approaching an additional $2-4 billion per annum over the next ten years there is no way that the university sector will be rebuilt to rival the world's best.
And the reduction of undergraduate courses as being embraced by the universities of Melbourne, Western Australia, Macquarie, Monash, South Australia and Victoria, is no solution. Nor would be the mere injection of additional resources into the current structure of the sector.
Despite the spin from Professor Davis, the aim of the universities' exercise is to balance their books and has nothing to do with enhancing the universities' contribution to the commonweal. Certainly the government under Kevin Rudd has not sprung to the assistance of the university sector in any substantial form in its first ten months in office, but neither has it exhibited the combative demeanour of John Howard's regressive Coalition.
And one thing the universities must come to terms with is that the Labor government is the only game in town.
If the herd of cats which has rebadged itself as "Universities Australia" doesn't get its act together and come up with a far reaching set of unified proposals, nothing of constructive consequence will result.
Seven years ago a Senate committee examined the crisis effecting the university sector. At one hearing the then vice-chancellor of The University of Adelaide, Mary O'Kane, pleaded with the members of the committee for the government to give direction to the sector. Of course none was given, and in fact it was an impossible request. It's up to the universities to deliver the policies, chapter an verse, including the matter of the provision of qualified teachers to the secondary and primary schools. Neither the previous Coalition government nor the incumbent Labor successor has a clue, with the former waving an imperious hand and issuing the dictum, "go forth and diversify", while Labor pontificates on "hubs and spokes".
The Australian's Higher Education Supplement reports that Melbourne's Professor Davis would have us believe that now "for the first time in living memory universities had decided to take charge of their own futures rather than allow government to determine policy".
And what a substantial decision it is!
As a matter of interest what does the University of California, Berkeley (one of the ten University of California campuses) offer in the way of courses, in contrast to Professor Davis' solution.
It is a public university established in 1868 (15 years after Melbourne), with an endowment of US$837 million (A$1,007 million, less than half that of Melbourne's A$2.2billion) and a student body of 35,000 of which 70% are undergraduates (Melbourne has 34,000 of which 76% are undergraduates).
UC, Berkeley is classified as a research university and is number 3 in the SJT rankings.
Below is the 2008 catalogue of its courses.
It is well past time for the universities' administrators and Australia's federal and state governments to get together and get real.
Alex Reisner
The Funneled Web
