Opinion - 15 July 2002
Is Progressive Fossilization Really the Avenue for Higher Education to Follow? |
Adrian Gibbs* questions if the first discussion paper from
the Department of Education, Science and Training isn't telegraphing its
intentions.
Universities will progressively ossify if they do not attract, support and retain the best and brightest staff, especially from among the young. At the moment Australian universities do not. The Government should define broad priority areas, and encourage Australian Universities to evolve by minimising bureaucratic meddling, which at present is throttling them.
The Discussion Paper
"Higher Education at the Crossroads" is clearly based on the premise that higher
education in Australia should be even more actively managed from the top than at
present.
The Consultative Questions in the Paper presumably reflect the
Government's view that yet another review of Higher Education is required.
These rhetorical Questions make it clear that more "rationalising...,
productivity.., efficiency.., staffing flexibility.., performance management..,
streamlined bureaucratic structures… and a framework of accountability" could
usefully be applied to the Higher Education sector. Many of the Questions imply
that the facts are already beyond doubt. For example "Can Australia have at
least one world-class university? What would it take?" (Qd1) tells an uncritical
reader that Australia does not at present have a "world-class university",
whatever that may be, and, similarly, "How can staffing productivity (both
general and academic) be increased and monitored?" (Qe2) tells one that
"staffing productivity" is less than it should be both in quantity and quality!
Two of the Consultative Questions, namely:
Qa2 "How can we best enhance the …quality of teaching in higher education?" and
Qd1 "How can Australia best develop and maintain world class capability in knowledge advancement?"
can be answered unequivocally.
These objectives can only be achieved by attracting the
very brightest people to work in Universities and providing support that induces
them to stay working there.
Nonetheless any objective analysis of the
Australian University sector would overwhelmingly conclude that neither of
those two conditions currently apply, and that recent Government-driven
bureaucratic initiatives are largely to blame; conditions currently offered in
Australian universities do not attract the brightest, nor do they induce them to
stay. At a recent joint meeting of the four learned academies I asked the
speakers for their views on this point, and all were also unequivocally of the
same opinion.
Most of the work and
much of the innovation in academia comes from the young,
however the amount
of support and independence most receive at present does not allow them to build
a career and skills base, and this current treatment of young academics poses
the greatest long term threat to the quality of Australian universities, and
hence to the intellectual life of the nation.
In research most young
Australian scientists are, at present, working on short-term contracts for older
academics.
This trend has been fostered by almost all recent Government
initiatives and funding agency restrictions, such as dollar for dollar 'funding
increases' or new ventures, the requirement for funding applications to include
promises of 'support' from tenured staff, funding for groups not individuals;
all such restrictions build the empires of the old at the expense of the
independence and careers of the young. One can apply a 'Peter Doherty
test'
to recent Government initiatives by asking whether an initiative would have been
available to, and helped, Peter Doherty at the time he did the work that earned
him the Nobel Prize. Only one recent ARC initiative might have helped him; a
slight increase in funding 'earmarked' for young scientists. All other
initiatives totally fail the Peter Doherty test as all build support for
'established' older workers rather than the young, most notably the
Federation Fellowship scheme which seems to based on the absurd notion that some
professors are more innovative if paid more!
Merely putting more money into
university research is not the answer to present problems.
I believe that the current structure of the higher education sector is almost
totally antipathetic to its aims. There needs to be fundamental change
from the present system in which bureaucracies either deliberately or
unwittingly build the 'empires of the old and tenured' and meddle in the fine
details of research, to a system in which the Government sets broad priority
areas, and merely organises for the best brains to be selected, supported and
given the freedom to work in those areas.
The best brains can be picked by
examining their past performance (or potential in the case of the young);
present demands that grant applications require evidence of support from
existing Departments, combined with fantasies of what it is hoped to accomplish,
must be abandoned. The best individuals should be fully funded at all
levels (students, post-docs and post-post-docs) with support commensurate to the
project area. Support should be full, stringless and for 3 years, or more for
the PP-doc, and those supported should be encouraged to join forces with the
best wherever they might be. Thus teams will build by the natural attraction of
those with like interests, or around specially funded 'equipment centres' (e.g. AGRF, APAF, ANU, WA State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, etc). The
Government should abandon the current system which fosters those who work the
bureaucracies in order to build empires by gaining control of large grants; only
'equipment centres' should be really long-term and large. The existing
gargantuan funding agencies (ARC, NHMRC, **DCs and other agencies) could be cut
by at least 75%, thereby releasing large amounts of funds and staff for
productive work, and also removing the drain on time and energy they impose on
all who take part of the present funding charade. Academic research must be
allowed to evolve (Qd1#b) using the intellectual and geographical mobility of
the brightest, especially the young, rather than ossifying it by top-down
planning.
It is totally anomalous that the present Government, which espouses deregulation in most areas it controls should stifle the University research sector with a steadily increasing regulatory load. Presumably it is because most Government advice comes from those, who benefit from the current system, namely the tenured, the old and the increasing army of ‘committeers/consultants’ most of them ex-academics.
Finally it should be noted that although the Consultative Questions in the Paper clearly imply that there is currently insufficient accountability, flexibility, productivity etc of university staff, no questions address the commensurate need for accountability of the bureaucracies that control universities and make ever increasing demands on the time and energy of staff at the coalface while never justifying their demands.
*Professor Adrian Gibbs, retired
Yarralumla, ACT.
This contribution, submission No.87 to the "Higher Education
at the Crossroads" review, is reprinted with the permission of the author.