Opinion - 17 September 2001

Not That Sort of Pyramid

Vladimir and Estragon are still waiting for Godot and as usual passing the time of day in mild disagreement.

V: Well?

E: Haven't seen him.

V: Were you looking?

E: No, thought you were.

V: Haven't had the time.

E: Really, flat to the boards sitting on the bench staring up into the tree looking for footprints like Holmes.

V: You got a better idea?

E: Consider the pyramid.

V: Alright, I'm considering... Gazan, blunted, I.M. Pei's, Uxmalian.

E: Maybe it's better you go back to looking for footprints. Vladimir, just consider it as an abstraction.

V: Right... got it.

E: What d'ya see in what you're pleased to call your mind's eye.

V: A rectangular base supporting four triangular sides which meet to form an apex. However, sometimes the sides may be trapezoidal...

E: Good lad, I'm glad to see that year 10 geometry did not pass you by.

V: Estragon, not to force the issue, but what's all this in aid of?

E: Science, the study of.

V: Oh... I thought the geometric analysis of the pyramid had been pretty well thrashed out a few millennia ago.

E: Vlad, you're been deliberately obtuse. Hasn't it struck you as being absurd that our governments, previous Labor as well as the current Coalition, claim we're bloody marvels at research, by which they seem to mean research with a goal in mind -- true curiosity-driven research is like the bastard child of old, not to be mentioned in polite company -- but don't convert it into money spinning industries. They've spent billions on Cooperative Research Centres (well over $7 billion at last count), push both the Australian as well as the National Health and Medical Research Councils into ever greater proportional support for applied research and yet systematically crush the foundations of the system on which learning is dependent.

V: Yes, shoeless one, it has crossed my ken. so what's that got to do with pyramids, abstract or otherwise?

E: (sighs) If you progressively reduce the area of the base while increasing the area of the apex what eventually happens?

V: The apex grows larger than the base...so... everybody knows that applied research and development costs more than basic research.

E: And if year after year you keep to the approach the base gets ever smaller and the apex larger... right?

V: I suppose so.

E: Until?

V: I'm on tenterhooks, until what?

E: Until the damn thing falls over...yes?

V: Oh, yes, I see what you mean.

E: Good I'm glad you do, because the government certainly doesn't, or they don't care. Could be both, they're not mutually exclusive.

V: Hang on, I can remember, would have been well over a year and a half, Paul Sheehan had a piece in the SMH... Wait I shall check my scrapbook.
    Yeah, here it is,

"The system has been breaking down for some time - it could never have worked," the Minister for Education, Dr Kemp, told the Herald. The system he is referring to is the explosive growth in the number of universities in the 1980s under the Labor minister for education, Mr John Dawkins.
    "The Dawkins reforms were based on a fallacy," says Dr Kemp. "The fallacy that you could have all universities offering the same."
    The historian Keith Windschuttle puts the point even more bluntly: "There has been a dumbing down of the elite universities. Absolutely. The older universities were screwed by the Dawkins plan. They were brought down to the level of the Colleges of Advanced Education."

E: When was that?

V: Beginning of February, last year.

E: So having said that 19 months ago the Government's done absolutely nothing, nothing to rectify the problem. If anything they now defend the situation, all you have to do is go through the comments of Senators Tierney and Brandis while taking testimony at their committee's hearings, and of course Dr. Kemp has told ANU's Vice-Chancellor to stop whingeing.

V: Too right, what about that $3 billion in the Innovation Action Plan.

E: Yap, over five years, $159 million this year and most of that for that mushrooming apex we're talking about. No, Vlad, beefing up the high tech sector is fine, but if the foundations of a good, really good, educational system from primary school up through universities and post graduate research aren't in place the system will topple. To point out the bleedin' obvious, at best it's currently in unstable equilibrium; a small push and over it goes. Oh and its $2.9 billion but what's $100 million among friends.

V: I was told by a cluey lobbyist that parliamentarians don't want to hear about problems all the time they want you to give the solutions.

E: Preferably ones that don't entail additional cost. Funny they pay enough millions in consultants fees but if you point out that the foundations of the education system are suffering from damp rot and concrete cancer, they're happy to listen as long as you give them a cost-free fix.

V: Estragon, they do have a good deal on their plate just at the moment, be reasonable.

E: You know Dawkins was Minister for Employment, Education and Training from '87-'92. John Howard became PM in '96. He and his government have had over five year to fix, "[the system that] could never have worked" but they have just exacerbated the problem while, accusing Dawkins of at best extraordinary wrong-headedness. To coin a phrase, "If it's broke, FIX IT."
    However, Vladimir, never underestimate the gravitational attraction of political point scoring, the day Paul Sheehen's SMH piece came out Labor's shadow minister for education, Michael Lee flung this rebuttal at the media:

Kemp's Next Plan: Close 15 Universities
 Dr Kemp clearly believes that these new universities, currently teaching more than 280,000 students, should never have been created.
 How can Australia have any chance of being a prosperous nation in the future if we have an education minister who is actually opposes an expansion in the number of Australian graduates?
    Dr Kemp wants to return to the Menzies era with 11 elite universities serving capital cities.
    Dr Kemp is going to have a hard time justifying this elitist policy to the 280,000 students at the 15 universities he believes should never have been created.
    Regional universities are massively important to their communities. They provide direct employment, bring students to regional communities, allow local students to attend university without leaving their families and create opportunities for local    businesses to create jobs.
    It is unbelievable that anyone in a position of responsibility for the future of Australia could argue that these universities should not have been created.

    I'm not sure whether a comment as inane as that is appalling or pathetic but it certainly is worthy of contempt. Is it really good to have a markedly inadequate system as long as you've spread it over the land so thinly its threadbare.

V: Oh, great visionary what would you have said - keeping in mind of course that you would be the Labor shadow minister for education and many things knowledge nationable?

E: Well, for openers how about nothing.

V: That's novel.

E: Look, Dawkins isn't a member of the Beazley opposition and never has been. There was no need for even an implied defense. Second, Michael Lee was attributing a plan to Kemp for which he had no evidence, and certainly not from the SMH quote. It was straight out scare mongering to gain points with regional Australians. Thirdly, the real case was and still is that Kemp has no plan to fix what really is a very, very serious problem. Windshuttle says it simply and correctly, "There has been a dumbing down of the elite universities. Absolutely. The older universities were screwed by the Dawkins plan. They were brought down to the level of the Colleges of Advanced Education."
    In fact they've been been lobotomised and disemboweled starting with the Dawkins reforms and continuing through first the Keating and then the Howard governments. For example there is not one physics department in any of the universities that comes close to first class status. Harvard's immediate past president told an audience of Harvard students a couple of months ago that Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory has a budget of US$16 million and opined  that Harvard couldn't run its history department on that. Do you know what ANU's Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering (note the inclusion of engineering) has for its current budget?

V: No, but I'm sure you'll tell me.

E: US$7.5 million.

V: Ok, I'm with you now, you're saying Kemp makes the perfectly reasonable point that you can't have 38 public universities all equal and all good.

E: Yap.

V: You're saying we had then and still have 38 public universities none of which is near the top of world rankings, and now, 19 months down the track, the Government not only hasn't done anything approaching serious renovations and alterations to a system which it  said was bad, it even defends its current state indicating it really needs only a bit of tinkering.

E: Ask Alan Gilbert. Our best ain't in the top 75 maybe not the top 100.

V: So what would you do?

E: Too late this evening, Vladimir, except... I'd start by working toward reducing the responsibilities of many, no, most of the regional universities. They would be empowered to grant bachelors degrees and masters degrees. But in most cases advanced degrees, for example in the sciences would be the province of research universities.

V: How many research unis?

E: About eight - and they would excel in particular areas.

V: Anything more.

E: Lots, but not tonight... it's getting late. Where'd you put the pyramid?

V: Under the bench.

Alex Reisner
The Funneled Web