Opinion- 29 March 2006 |
Jeopardy & Hope: Harry Robinson Asks Why is Higher Education on Short Rations? |
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Hope in the Darkness |
Why is higher education
on short financial rations? Because it seems to offer little to politicians.
Fear will drive voters to support spending on health; similarly, fear will get
the public nod for defence expenditure. But university education is an electoral
also-ran. Great swathes of voters think of universities as technical schools
where the young go for job tickets. If they think of universities at all. Little
wonder that political parties and union movements pay little attention to the
tertiary level. Two witnesses are Professors Judith Brett and Richard Sennett,
speaking from opposite ends of the earth and from opposite ends of the political
spectrum.
And yet . and yet .. we also hear from one politician who has seen a better
tomorrow.
Professor Judith Brett teaches politics at La Trobe. She also teaches the public
at large about Liberal people and Liberal doings through her books dealing with
Menzies, the 'forgotten people', John Howard et al. Dr Brett will never make
much money from her books because they do not offer scandal or political
outrage.
It is a tad unfashionable but she seems to like her Libs: she is not blind,
though, and notes their foolish failings and wrong turnings. She does her best
to produce balanced, factual, reasonable accounts of Liberal affairs -- as a
good academic should. This simply makes her a person worth hearing.
One day in March, Judith Brett was Margaret Throsby's mid morning interviewee on
ABC Classic FM. They made for good listening. At Throsby's promptings Dr Brett
gave her reasons for John Howard's ten years in office. She pointed out that his
first term had been rather grim, as though he wanted nothing more than to keep
the nation locked into a 1959 stance, that he could establish no rapport at all
with voters in the street. She illustrated his gradual change toward presenting
as a 'good bloke,' talking the talk of everyday vernacular -- mateship and all
that caper. She touched on the Lib legacy of financial reform from Lab
governments, Lib policies, Lib luck with rising foreign trade, the benefits of
Lib economic management.
Deftly, Throsby guided Brett to a Howard downside. Specifics, please, of wrong
turnings?
The honest academic came to the fore. Yes, she said. She regarded the Industrial
Relations bill as a gross mistake driven by ideology. And she thought some
institutions had been weakened. "Such as?" pressed Ms Throsby. "Well," said Dr
Brett uncomfortably, "The universities."
Time was up. There was no exploration but the damaging assessment was out. John
Howard and his government had weakened our universities -- a verdict not from a
political rival but one from a dispassionate source.
Consider now Professor Richard Sennett who teaches sociology at the London
School of Economics. He spoke on Radio National's Saturday Extra. Stephen
Crittenden, sitting in for La Doogue, quizzed Sennett about his book Culture
of the New Capitalism.
Sennett turned out to be an original thinker. No stuffy recounting of received
wisdom for him. In a nutshell, he proposed that capitalists -- he meant the men
and women who run large corporations -- have sniffed the wind of globalisation
and are restless. No longer are they satisfied to set up a business and stick
with it over long periods of time. Because of the ease of moving money around
the world, the ease of finding ever cheaper supplies of labour, the ease of
spotting new niches, new opportunities -- because of all these mobility factors,
they are minded to move their businesses from place to place and from one field
to another. (Macquarie Bank springs to mind.) It followed, said Professor
Sennett, that successful staffers needed to be quick and flexible, not only to
move from place to place but also from industry to industry. Jacks and Jills of
the future need to be nimble and quick.
Crittenden asked how employee unions were coping with the new culture?
They were not, said Sennett. They had not grasped the implications of the new
capitalist culture, a failure helping toward their decline.
"They always talk of old work," he said.
Sennett believed the unions should have re-cast their role from wage-rate
defenders. His thrust was that the culture of new capitalism offered unions new
opportunities -- to help their people take advantage of new work . set up as
employment agents to point the way to new opportunities, to flag the need for
working people to train and re-train, by assisting with financial and contract
advice. They should look forward for their members, not backward at old
conditions in old industries..
Professor Sennett might be a few steps ahead of reality but his direction seems
fairly right. We have had some indicators with the introduction of the
Industrial Relations law. Greg Combe, secretary of the ACTU, announced that his
movement would "act to protect Australian workers." He was looking back not
forward.
What has all this to do with tertiary eduction? Judith Brett showed that the
political Right had weakened universities and the implication was that they
could expect little from that side. Richard Sennett indicted that Left thinking
has stalled. It is trailing reality.
Even if the Lib government gave way to a Lab government next year, universities
could expect short rations -- as short as they are now.
The picture is not all black. From the west came a voice of hope. The premier of
W.A., Alan Carpenter, told an audience that the future of his state would come
not from the sale of uranium ore but from "science and innovation."
How wild! How hopeful!
Harry Robinson -- for 25 years worked in television journalism in Oz and the US and was for several years air media critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald.