On August 6^th last year Mary O'Kane announced her resignation from the Vice-Chancellorship of the University of Adelaide. In the five years that she served as vice-chancellor Professor O'Kane strove to introduce reforms, "The challenge [of which] has been to bring about the change necessary to position the University for growth at a time of reduced funding and consequent pressure to generate significant new sources of income." Her approach in meeting the challenge brought tension between her and the university board to a point where a constructive relationship appeared to have become sufficiently difficult to cause Professor O'Kane to tender her resignation.
    In a short essay for the March issue of the WiseNet Journal which O'Kane titled "Tilting at windmills, sliding down snakes and generally having a great time" she says in part, "I have a passionate belief about Australian higher education and research institutions. I believe Australia should make the very best out of its investment in these organisations. I believe that a knowledge-rich society is essential for the social and economic well-being of our country. I would like to see more public investment in higher education but it is hard to see what areas of public spending could be cut to provide it [italics ours]."
    What is so unexpected in that observation by the former vice-chancellor is that she would be as well aware as any of her v-c colleagues that the current average expenditure for OECD countries in R&D as a per-cent of GDP is just over 2% while Australia's remains, at best, static at 1.4% of GDP. The Federal Government has made the point that it's contribution per se is among the better of the OECD countries and it is the private sector that is dragging its feet. What counters this claim is that private sector R&D investment decreased dramatically  with the marked reduction of the tax incentives for industry in the 1995/96 financial year. Such incentives are obviously indirect federal support for R&D and are a critical means for bringing Australia around to top OECD standards. The Howard government in its Backing Australia's Ability has gone partway to redressing the problem, but it must reexamine those incentives and improve their attractiveness to gain significant additional industry participation. That said, the point also must be made that the Federal government is decreasing the proportion of its spending for both higher education in general as well as increasing the proportion of its R&D spending toward short term returns. In addition the proportion of expenditure by our public universities funded by the Federal government continues to decline as shown in the chart in which there is an exponentially increasing discrepancy between average weekly earnings by Australians and the government's grant for public university operations. It is disingenuous to claim that the fault lies with the private sector as was purported by the Liberal members of the 2001 Senate committee determining the ability of our universities to meet the nation's requirements.

Alex Reisner
The Funneled Web