Aye, But Who Will Pay For It?    Professor Glyn Davis Vladimir (l) & Estragon

Vladimir: Got yourself a new pair of shoes I see. Bit extravagant, don't you think?

Estragon: Not really, someone left them in a bin for the council cleanup; left the old ones in their place which I thought was pretty big of me really.

                 What you been up to?

V: Following the great debate on rejigging Melbourne University.

E: Real fascinating stuff, Vlad; haven't you got anything better to do?

V: Don't knock it; if the Melbourne VC plays his cards right, he'll have the media running with this into the campaign for the next federal election. Dr Nelson's already making like he's prepared to sing from the same song sheet. Mind you I don't think the two of them would be singing in the same key.

E: Meaning?

V: Well take last Wednesday fortnight. Glyn Davis, who's been Melbourne's VC for less than a year plonks down a forty-nine page manifesto and says this is  gonna be (he hopes) the NEW University of Melbourne.

E: So is it a big deal?

V: Depends on how you look at it. For openers he wants to move the undergraduate teaching from the rather rigid structure of prescribed yearly curricula to the course structure used by most US universities to give a broader tertiary education for a three year  bachelor's degree and increase the emphasis on research and graduate studies.

E: That tells me bugger all, give me a for instance... but before you launch into a lecture, how does this rearrangement of the dinner tableware make it a better university; the bloody place is on its beam ends like all the others if the truth be told.

V: User to pay, simple as that.

E: Come off it, who's he kidding.

    Skip that for the moment, just what is his American plan as it were?

V: He hasn't spelled it out but if it's what I suspect he's aiming at a structure where all students have to take a certain number of specific courses to increase their breath of knowledge. In the US often it takes about two years to get through those courses, and a course may take a quarter/semester or in some cases a full year. For example, whether or not you intend to become a medico, an engineer, go into finance or astronomy you'll have to take a one year course in the history of civilization. You'll probably have to take a language for at least a couple of quarters and at least a beginning course in one of the sciences.

    You get the idea, become a well rounded citizen but you're allowed a fair number of options to amass the number of "general education units" you'd need to get your degree.

E: Is it effective?

V: On balance, probably, but not uniquely so, after all neither Cambridge or Oxford use it.

    It does lead to a fair amount of grumbling among the students in the "I don't need to know this crap" vein, but there's no doubt they get exposed to ideas, and knowledge, that wouldn't otherwise come their way. From an Australian perspective look at it this way, it might give our prospective politicians a more balanced outlook when they make decisions regarding law making.

    But there's a point that should be made, in the US universities students are taking courses toward a specific bachelor's degree as well during their four year undergraduate status, so whether you go to say Princeton University or Swarthmore College you'll be taught advanced courses in molecular biology, chemistry, differential equations for example, if say you expect to get a BA from Swarthmore's Department of Chemistry/Biochemistry.

    If you look at its Chem/Biochem department's introductory web page you'll see you're expected to know something more the "general good citizenship" when you graduate.

E: So what else does Swarthmore College offer besides Chemistry/Biochemistry?

V: I thought you'd never ask --

E: And how many students?

V: About 1,500 -- all undergraduates. Don't get me wrong it's private and it's among the best of the US' liberal arts colleges but it's by no means unique. And its faculty do research, but that's the rule for the better liberal arts colleges as well as the campuses of California's second tier university system, the State University of California.

    Teaching only?  That's for the two-year "community college/junior college" sort of schools.

E: Wait a minute, there's something else, US universities run multiple courses don't they? If you're a "humanist" and you gotta do some science aren't you offered a group of dead-end courses, you know like biology 1,2 and 3, which isn't a prerequisite for anything, while if you want to go on to learn more about say genetics you need to take a significantly more taxing group?

V: got it in one.

E: So will Melbourne have to create more courses?

V: No idea, but I think the plan might be to avoid the issue.

E: What's that supposed to mean?

V: Well, let's say if you are one of the small percentage of students admitted for undergraduate work you muck in with a standard open ended course, no baby stuff for you. Mind you I don't think plans are that far advanced that anything's been really thought through.

E: That's daft.

V: Not if your object is to discourage all but a few undergraduate students, let the near teaching only universities you got in mind do it, the idea being their "graduates" then come to the research universities once they got a degree from a three year course from a regional or suburban uni.

E: Great, they ought to be just the meat for graduate work. That's not how I understand the US system works. For starters there's active research going on in all the better so-called US colleges, which normally give four year bachelor degrees.

V: Yes, and it gets better. What do you think is the percentage of undergraduates at the state research universities?

E: Go ahead, tell me.

V: Here's a small table for you, if you want I could expand the list but have a look, I think you'll get the idea that all is not quite what's suggested by Professor Davis or Dr Nelson. In short does the group of eight universities have to become Harvards or Stanfords?

    I don't really think so.

E: But you know, Vlad, your little table says a lot.

    And the first thing it tells me is the Professor Davis and Dr Nelson have their own agendas but they're not quite the same.

V: Well, Dr Nelson's is John Howard's but let that pass, what are you trying to tell me well-shod one.

E: From the Coalition government's viewpoint the university sector funding should be brought to as low a point as possible without significantly hurting their election chances. At the same time there is the matter of the university sector tending to be politically left of centre so academics and students must be kept on a tight leash.

V: And Melbourne's vice-chancellor?

E: He's something of an enigma. Clearly he's decided that obtaining a significant increase in funding from the Federal Government is a fruitless exercise and he has no intention of wasting his time and effort in making representations to it whether the Minister is Dr Nelson or anyone else. From what we're told he seems to have had a look around the traps and come out with the statement that he wants The University of Melbourne to be like the University of California's Berkeley campus but then he describes his aim as something which is a university with a student population of about 35,000 (bit less than twice that of Harvard) and a ratio of graduates to undergraduates which might be that between Harvard's and Stanford's, though he gave no exact figure. But he certainly wasn't talking in the 70% undergraduate range which happens to be the percentage of undergraduates at both Berkeley and Cambridge.

V: I really don't see where he's coming from on that argument. In fact seems to me what he's advocating in toto makes no sense. It's as if he's thrashing around in desperation.

• An American-type course structure but with a three year bachelor's degree most of which are to be obtained at teaching only, or near teaching only "universities".
      --That's not the US system, its a travesty of it.

• For Melbourne to become a Berkeley style of university.
      -- But Berkeley has 71% undergraduates, is a public university no less than Melbourne is now, perhaps rather more so if the truth be told.

• Revenues to be increased sufficiently from increased student fees to not only overcome immediate funding woes but to allow the university to move into the top echelon of research institutions. Would public universities like California, Berkeley; Wisconsin, Madison or Washington, Seattle be good enough?
      -- Quite frankly trying to do it through student fee increases is abject nonsense, he'd have better luck getting Rupert Murdoch to bequeath all his News Limited shares to the university.

E: I think you just may have a point. Did you see that former University of Michigan President James Duderstadt is calling on US Midwestern universities and colleges to pressure legislators for funding to help move the region from a manufacturing-based economy to one that’s knowledge-based. He's put his name to a hundred page assessment of what needs to be done. It certainly doesn't resemble the Glyn Davis approach. And (1) the University of Michigan currently comes in as 21 in the research university rankings, (2) currently charges US$6,700 per annum for undergraduate tuition and (3) Michigan's state universities have a 40/60 income split (government/other) virtually that of Australian universities.

V: So tell me, Estragon, do you have a solution for Professor Davis, or any other VC come to that, or do we content ourselves with rubbishing him and wringing our hands declaiming the unfairness of it all.

E: Well, I go along with him on the matter of trying to get the current Federal Government to increase its support for the universities, it's not going to happen.

V: And the Opposition.

E: No, they're not even very good at slinging bolts at the Coalition, and frankly I doubt that they even have a creditable policy in the mill.

V: So?

E: So that leaves philanthropies, which expatriate Seth Grant at Cambridge has advocated. You know hit Murdoch and/or Packer to set up a Howard Hughes or Welcome type of foundation. Worth a try, but even if it would succeed you'd probably find its the biomedical sciences that would benefit, pretty well exclusively.

    That leaves individual donations, which could be useful for perhaps the one digit millions, and state governments.

V: STATE Governments? Good God, Whitlam took revenue support for universities out of their hands thirty years ago.

E: That's right, and while I've no doubt where that's taken the universities was never his intention, look where they are now.

    Harold Shapiro, the emeritus president of Princeton University, in commenting on  Jennifer Washburn's University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education made the point, "[Ms Washburn] offers a set of recommendations that generally increase the authority of the federal government or other third parties. With the exception of a proposal aimed at strengthening conflict-of-interest regulations, I find these unpersuasive and, in many cases, a little naïve."

V: Ok, point taken but just how do you see the states actually turning things around?

E: Well, two state governments that might be persuaded that investing in their universities has not just merit but great value. Max Whitten made the case in an open letter to Brendan Nelson last March.

V: I suppose you mean Victoria and New South Wales.

E: Half right, Victoria and Queensland. Bob Carr may be bookish, but he proved no friend of the universities, wanted to unload them onto Dr Nelson you might remember and Mr Iemma shows no signs of wanting to assist the university sector.

V: And you think Bracks and Beattie are better bets.

E: Yes, I do. They'd have to be, well, lobbied and a long-term critically thoughtout "roadmap" developed. In their case I don't think that James Duderstadt's tongue in cheek suggestion that "sometimes to get a mule to move, you first have to whack it over the head with a two-by-four" would work, but I do believe that they would be prepared to listen, and that's a damn sight more than Brendan Nelson or the Federal Cabinet are prepared to do.

V: I take it you're talking about finding billions.

E: Yes, there are a number of instruments that a state government could use were it prepared to undertake the investment, and that's what it would be. Sure, they would have to be selective as to how to go about it, but if the will were there it not only could happen it would happen and the rewards would be significant.

V: Ok maybe Glyn Davis could approach the Bracks government and not be shown the door quick smart, but Peter Beattie?

E: I think there're good signs the Beattie does care about his state's universities but he too would have to be shown critically thought out plans and timelines.  And its up to the university administrations to do that. Of course if they're bone lazy about doing it and incompetent, then matters really are hopeless.

V: And what about the "Americanisation" of universities curricula?

E: Well, Vladimir, look at it this way, the fact that Cambridge and Oxford are ranked 2 and 10 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and they most certainly are not "Americanised" suggests that Americanisation is not a necessary condition to gain the heights.

    On the other hand top staff, good infrastructure, and enough time for academics do their job properly and think, that's another matter.

V: Ah you're a card, Estragon, a real jolly joker. Must be that purloined pair of shoes you've put on your feet.

     Pinching a bit? Have a carrot.

Alex Reisner

The Funneled Web

*Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University