Editorial-16 December 2003 |
The Populist Superficiality of Brendan
Nelson |
Last week the Minister for Education, Science and Training,
Brendan Nelson, gave an "exclusive interview" to the
Australian's
Higher Education Section's Samantha Maiden. Emanating from the views
that Dr Nelson expressed (not for the first time) are strong suggestions that he is playing to a populist gallery.
He has on occasion quoted the
former Labor Minister for Science, Barry Jones, so perhaps it's not out of place
to take a paragraph from Jones' address to the University of Melbourne when he
was awarded a Doctor of Laws honoris causa in April last year. In that
address, as Dr Nelson has pointed out, Barry Jones commented, "A turning point
in the history of Australia’s higher education was the comprehensive
reorganization which was initiated, and indeed imposed, from 1987 by John
Dawkins, Bob Hawke’s Minister for Education and Training. I have little doubt
that Dawkinsisation will prove to have been the greatest single mistake of the
Hawke-Keating years." Dr Nelson indicated his agreement.
However, there were other observations
made by Barry Jones which Dr Nelson hasn't quoted –
There are at least four reasons for the retreat of
universities from public engagement:
1. They are under very heavy
pressure to achieve more with reduced resources and many academics are
crushed by administrative burdens and keeping up with the complexity of new
developments to have much time for research or to engage in public debate.
2. Dependence on outside
funding means that academics are uneasy about offending major corporations,
for example by taking up such issues as pollution, global warming, drugs of
addiction.
3. The media sets the agenda for
public debate and the academic community is not called on for comment - it
then withdraws within its fortress
4. Universities are accused of being
elitist (a particularly damaging accusation in the current climate), self
serving and remote.
We live in deeply troubled times and I would hope that
intellectuals could provide more leadership than they are at present.
Not
only do Dr Nelson's higher education "reforms" not address the first two issues
raised by Barry Jones, by his actions and statements he plays on the fourth
through perceived populist sentiment
coming out with the sweeping statement such as:
What I've tried to do is develop an environment
where universities themselves, with financial assistance, if they choose to,
can start to rationalise some of their low cost, low-demand courses.
Scores of courses [have as few
as five students enrolled].
[You then find] Kids are jammed in like sardines, hanging from the
rafters,
They have 600 people doing a particular course, at 350 they put the boom
gates down on the lecture theatre.
For the very first time, we have competitive pricing
tensions between the universities. Every university campus is going to have
to sit down early next year and think about a number of things. What is this
course worth? What's the capacity of our student profile as graduates to
meet the HECS contribution when it is levied? What do students actually get
for their money?
So
is the good doctor advocating that the study of antiquities, or classics, or
languages such as aboriginal dialects are to be crushed. Or perhaps subjects
such as gauge
theory, or orthogonal polynomials, neither of which are on the undergraduate hit
parade, ought to be junked?
But perhaps it's the case that the minister really does think only in populist sound bites. He concluded with this tilt at a straw man
on the indexation of university funding.
If all we did was put more money into universities,
you would compound the problems. You might delay the crash against the wall,
but you would compound the problem.
I
don't recall anyone in authority in the university sector suggesting that
indexation was all that was required. But it sure as hell is one element of many
that is. And from a financial viewpoint the university sector will require a lot
more than indexation if is to raise its level in order to form the foundation of a
"first world"
knowledge economy.
Returning to the Minister's avowal of Barry Jones' condemnation of
Dawkinsisation, what appears to be Dr Nelson's approach to corrective measures
is little short of corrosive, and suggests perhaps that he has coined a
triumphant motto for his department...
A Gresham's Law for
Universities is Good! |
Alex Reisner
The Funneled Web