The Minister for Education, Science and Training Fronted the ABC's The National Interest and Gave Some Telling Answers.

    The ABC's Sunday noon-time program, The National Interest, hosted by Peter Mares yesterday had the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, as its guest.

    Mr Mares quiet but sometimes confrontational style produced a harder hitting interview than that to which the minister had previously been subjected.

Currently there is no transcript available but a recording is available online [Click the "RealAudio" button, then continue. When the web page, and move the pointer to 34'30" to reach the beginning of the interview].

As would be expected Ms Bishop reiterated what she has said since the middle  of June* stating that because Australia has neither the staff nor the population to maintain 37 public and three private universities and because our higher education system suffers from the relentless pursuit of sameness, they must diversify.

If Peter Mares had hoped that he would get Ms Bishop to clarify just what she means by diversify he would have been disappointed.

In answer to his first question as to what she means by a need for greater diversity he was told that universities must "play to their strengths and be the very best that they can in their area of expertise.... Diversity will be across a broad range of areas of [courses and management structures]."

It should be patently obvious by now that Ms Bishop has about as much idea of what she means by "diversity" as George Bush has of an exit strategy from Iraq, if not, read on.

She points at Switzerland's ETH "which specialises in engineering and natural sciences." Interestingly the ETH is a federal university as distinct from the universities which are institutions of the Swiss cantons. In that sense ETH is like ANU, and ANU is noted for its Institute for Advanced Studies.

Identical to ETH? No but it could be the equivalent or better were Ms Bishop and her government interested in providing the resources for it to become so.^† 

And it should be mentioned that overall Switzerland maintains 10 cantonal universities, and two federal institutes of technology (Swiss population = 7.5 million):

The cantonal universities are Basle, Berne, Lucerne, St Gall, Zurich (German speaking), Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel (French speaking), Fribourg (bilingual, F&G) and Università della Svizzera (Italian speaking).

    The two Federal universities are the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

Funny that, the ratio of universities to population numbers is pretty close to Australia's; a matter Ms Bishop in her eager proclamation that "Australia has neither the staff nor the population to maintain 37 public and three private universities" seems to have overlooked.

It would be refreshing were Ms Bishop to acknowledge that it falls to her and her government to upgrade the ANU so that is can stand not merely with but above ETH. But so far the last thing they are prepared to accept is real responsibility for improving our federal university.

But Ms Bishop's blithe enunciation of half truths wasn't about to stop.

She noted that Australia doesn't have specialist universities in aeronautical  engineering( France), arts (England), or Medical research such as Rockefeller University. It wasn't stated if Ms Bishop felt we should convert some of our universities in order to emulate all of the above.

As an aside, Rockefeller University initially was like the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) a research institute. In 1955 Rockefeller Institute expanded its mission to include education, admitting its first class of graduate students. It granted its first doctoral degrees in 1959. In 1965, it became The Rockefeller University.

And perhaps Ms Bishop is unaware that WEHI has both PhD and BSc(Hons) students as well as an extensive postdoctoral program. Must have just slipped her mind.

Then in answer to Peter Mares' point that all universities would want to have courses in the popular subjects in order to attract maximum funding Ms Bishop used the "I'll answer the question I want to answer, not the one you asked" ploy telling him there are more places at university than students to fill them so the unis must get smarter in enticing students to come to their institution (Dr Nelson's cappuccino courses perhaps).

Mares then got to the question of liberal arts universities saying no university would want to deliberately look to getting its funding cut by just specialising in in liberal arts and the humanities.

Ms Bishop reply of -- well what about Wellesley Collage in the US; it's recognised as one of the great universities -- was at best ill informed and at worst disingenuous.

First off it's not a university. It awards four-year baccalaureates; it does not grant doctorates. Secondly as TFW pointed out a fortnight ago Wellesley's 2300 students attend a college with an endowment significantly greater than that of Melbourne University and its curricula encompass over 60 academic departments, majors and programs. A student can major in subjects ranging from Astrophysics to Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Medieval/Renaissance Studies, Mathematics through to Theater Studies."  As for physics, the department boasts seven full-time professors and three full-time laboratory instructors who are engaged in a wide range of teaching and research activities. Now THAT IS a liberal arts college.

What is clear is that Ms Bishop as did her predecessor tosses out words such as "specialisation" and "diversification" without having any idea of what they're talking about and they certainly are not addressing the point that Australia has severe shortages of academics in the enabling science, mathematics, statistics and engineering. "Specialisation" and "diversification" in no way addresses that problem. And the progressive degeneration of academic scientific infrastructure is not redressed by "specialisation" and "diversification".

And neither her predecessor nor Ms Bishop has shown an interest in addressing the point that a university is first and foremost a product of its faculty. Support the best personnel and the rest follows; but support doesn't just mean big pay cheques it also means good facilities and appropriate working conditions.

Alex Reisner

The Funneled Web