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News & Views item -
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The vice-chancellor of The University of Sydney was close to ecstatic when the Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, announced the $5 billion Educational Endowment Fund.
President of the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee, Gerard Sutton's, reaction? "We were asking for half a billion dollars a year. They delivered that, but they delivered in a way that stays with us forever;" while Glyn Davis, the vice-chancellor of Melbourne University told The Sydney Morning Herald's John Garnaut, "One of the reasons I was so pleasantly surprised is higher education has not featured in national policy for some time."
On the other hand Ian Chubb, the Australian National University's vice-chancellor injected a note of caution, "I hope the returns on the endowment fund aren't smeared across the sector."
And Macquarie University's vice-chancellor, Steven Schwartz had earlier made the point that "Most resources, including the earnings of the new endowment fund, will be allocated by bureaucrats rather than the market and universities will be given limited scope to vary the fees for HECS students."
Professor Chubb concurs, federal funding rules should not require "counting every marble in the bag". And as to the federal government's overweening desire for micromanagement, "How can you support democracy if ideas aren't being put into the public domain because people get their heads kicked in if they do? There's a bit of that going on, you know."
Mr Garnaut also writes:
In the nation's campuses, it's hard to escape the feeling elite learning has been one of the great victims of a broad cultural cringe and, specifically, the Howard Government's cultural wars. World-class universities can be sustained only in an atmosphere where education is admired. "A big part of building world-class universities is governments at the national level actually think this is important. They talk it up - that great education should be celebrated," says Davis.
This view is not confined to academics. Before the budget, a Howard minister confided to the Herald that if Rudd Labor won the election, "my one consolation is that he would at least salvage the universities". (The previous education minister, Brendan Nelson, accused the Labor Party as being "obsessed with higher education".)
Despite this week's budget injection, the vice-chancellors are under no illusions as to the challenge Australia faces in keeping up with enormous investment in top universities around the world.
To emphasise the point the vice-chancellors can start with George Brandis, the Queensland Senator who consistently over the past six years has never seen any problems in regard to the infrastructure or staffing of the nation's universities (see the transcripts of The Back Row) was still at it yesterday on the ABC's Lateline talking to Virginia Trioli:
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George Brandis |
In relation to higher education, at university education, it really annoys me to hear the Labor Party, as they've been doing this week, constantly talk down the quality of Australian universities. It is a little-remembered fact Virginia, but may I remind your viewers that for each of the last three years, the world lead table of university rankings has included among the 50 best universities in the world, six from Australia. That's right across the world. We only have 38 universities in Australia and for years now, six of those 38 have been among the best 50 in the world.
Six in the top fifty? Well it depends whose assessment you take. The Times or the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In the latter none of Australia's universities makes the top fifty. So, if "the vice-chancellors are under no illusions as to the challenge Australia faces in keeping up with enormous investment in top universities around the world," we may assume they've got a careful watch on the Minister for Arts and Sport who has no problem being selective with his facts.
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