Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small
Business and Education Committee
The capacity of public universities to meet Australia’s higher
education needs*
Introduction
Public higher education in Australia has become a mixture of government
and private funding. The drift to this mix has sometimes occurred in the
context of strategic planning that has not referred to the basic purposes
of the institutions, other than in general mission and vision statements.
Consequently there are tensions within student bodies and between academic
teaching and research staff and academic executive staff.
Public higher education in Australia, like that in the USA, has evolved
to a stage where there are three mixed purposes, of varying degrees of
compatibility:
- democratic equality: to produce competent citizens;
- social efficiency: to train productive workers;
- social mobility: to help the private individual to get ahead.
The first two relate to education as a public good, the last to education
as a private good. A conflict between these two goods can arise because
"the key point is that if education is going to serve the goal of
social mobility effectively, it has to provide some people with benefits
that others do not get. As a private good, education benefits only the
owner, serving as an investment in my future, not yours; in my children,
not other people’s children. This calls for an education system that
focuses heavily on grading sorting and selecting students" (Labaree,
2000).
Adequacy of Current Funding
(a) the adequacy of current funding arrangements with respect
to:
i. the capacity of universities to manage and serve increasing demand.
"The number of students, from both Australia and overseas, seeking
access to Australian higher education will also increase. Demographic
pressures mean that the number of Australian students seeking first time
access to higher education will rise over the next two decades" (West,
1998: 17). The rather neglected West report provided compelling evidence
that the capacities of Australian universities to manage and serve increasing
demand are stretched to the limit.
This Report also canvassed the issues in striving to establish a world-class
university system in Australia. While some individual universities are
taking practical steps to ensure that at least they individually may become
world-class universities, no one can seriously argue that this is public
policy in Australia at the moment.
There is no real vision to synergise the creative energies of the various
forces which are pulling higher education in Australia in various directions:
- Commonwealth versus States and Territories,
- State versus State,
- Groupings within the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee,
- Public versus Private,
- Academic versus General Unions,
- Unions versus Vice-Chancellors,
- Teaching versus Research,
- Undergraduate versus Postgraduate Students,
- Vocational Education and Training versus Higher Education.
The list is not exhaustive, and while ‘versus’ might be provocative,
rhetoric from the various groups cannot hide the reality.
ii. institutional autonomy and flexibility.
Why not give those universites which see themselves as serious players
on the world academic scene sufficient institutional autonomy and flexibility
to achieve their goals? Then they may act as beacons to guide and inspire
other institutions of higher education in Australia to emulate some facets
of their achievements; (cf. Group of Eight, 2000).
The system as a whole will not become world class under present financial
arrangements. The lack of real support for the plethora of reports in
recent years shows that the political will to achieve this is absent.
Without vigorous political leadership we shall never put the effort into
world class academic achievements that we put into sporting prowess. Otherwise
why are we prepared to accept mediocrity in academic life when we accept
nothing but winning in sporting life? Not that we would accept the latter
as necessarily good, nor are we neglecting the fact that we have many,
very many academics with well-deserved international stature and recognition.
Some were the products of days when there were smaller classes, when there
was time to browse in the library or smell the daisies, when curiosity
driven research flourished. Others have achieved so much despite the system!
Is there any evidence that more and more government regulations safeguard
anyone? Some of these regulations were introduced to protect the consumer,
particularly in relation to some private providers. There are still private
providers that bring discredit on the sector, though most private providers
are there for the long haul, driven by lofty goals and the pursuit of
excellence. These motivate many public providers too, though one does
not get the same sense of relish in the media when reporting any of their
misfortunes!
This is getting close to the nub of the problem: on the one hand an equating
of ‘public’ with ‘government’ and on the other hand
the belief that government-funded institutions, though often self-accrediting,
automatically uphold high standards. Allied with this is the view, common
in Australia, that we have paid our taxes so the government should look
after things. This is in contrast to the USA where both corporate wealth
and private donations often contribute to the common-wealth of higher
education, with personal donations to public as well as private universities
and colleges. (For instance, Grinnell College in Iowa is a small liberal
arts college with an enrolment just over one thousand students and an
endowment just over one billion US dollars!)
We see this in debates over primary and secondary schools where several
points of confusion emerge: that all those who send their children to
some schools are automatically wealthy, thus discounting the enormous
sacrifices many parents make in exercising their prior rights in education;
that the ‘extras’ that private schools provide are symbols of
their wealth, rather than the fruits of much extra effort from all associated
with these school communities. Added to these are the arithmetical errors
in sourcing Commonwealth and State funds propagated by various interest
groups.
If these are very real issues at the school level, they are much more
problematic at the tertiary level, where any realistic parental and student
choice can be severely constrained by financial pressures. Even with the
provision of full- and part-scholarships, it is difficult for private
providers not to drift into catering for the relatively wealthy, especially
in those courses which require extensive equipment. Can public providers
avoid this drift in the current funding climate?
iii. the quality and diversity of teaching and research.
Quality and diversity - like motherhood - are good, but how are they
achieved in practice? How can they be achieved so that they permeate the
system, and are not just left to the ‘stars’of teaching or research?
Do we really value quality and diversity if we exclude most private providers
from the HECS system or some similar income-contingent loan scheme? That
so many not only survive but even flourish in the present economic climate
says that many of them are doing many things the way parents and students
want them. But are their offerings to be restricted to a privileged few?
Are they going to be forced to become enclaves only for those who can
afford them - often at great personal sacrifice - often too after paying
high fees for many years for the right to attend schools which promote
the values they espouse or provide the educational choices that they seek?
Indeed why do we need to ask these questions again when already "there
is a plethora of studies on the quality of Australian universities, to
say nothing of the overseas studies on quality assurance, performance
indicators, and so on" (Anderson et al, 2000. 11)? Is one
more study an excuse for continued lack of action?
Reliance on Mixed Funding Sources
(b) the effect of increasing reliance on private funding and
market behaviour on the sector’s ability to meet Australia’s
education, training and research needs, including its effect on:
i. the quality and diversity of education.
Over the last twenty years, financial constraints, including budget cuts
in one form or another, and increased spending in relative terms on postgraduate
programs - necessary in order to respond to various financial carrots
from the government and for prestige in the academic world and among alumni
- have together forced many public universities to save money by a variety
of educational cost-cutting tactics. These include larger classes, particularly
in what used to be tutorials, fewer class contact hours, more theory and
less use of equipment in practical classes, more streamlined assessment
procedures, and even in extreme cases of mixing undergraduate and postgraduate
classes in the one lecture theatre.
At the same time as there have been laudable attempts to reward outstanding
teachers and to raise the profile of teaching as an important academic
pursuit, large classes can easily result in the passive transmission of
knowledge which can, in turn, lead to the memorisation of facts to throw
back in some test. When this happens, where is the development of fundamental
intellectual skills? How is genuine critical thinking encouraged?
Private providers almost universally have small classes and put much
emphasis on all staff, both academic and administrative, getting to know
their students: not just their names, but them as people. Pastoral care
and acting in loco parentis are viewed as important, even in those
colleges which are secular in ethos. This is increasingly difficult in
large, public, comprehensive universities (Sperber, 2000).
Quality undergraduate teaching is labour-intensive. While it is best
delivered by active scholars, few academics can really teach at a high
level and, at the same time, conduct the sort of serious research needed
for prestigious research grants (though this of course begs the question:
does one do the research to get the grants or get the grants to do research?).
The research needs of Australia’s public universities have been
canvassed quite thoroughly in the last couple of years. Their implications
for teaching and scholarship are fairly obvious and require fundamental
answers to radical questions from Australia’s research leaders, perhaps
with the wide perspective akin to that shown in the 1940s in the USA by
leaders like Vannever Bush and Karl T Compton from MIT, James B Conant
form Harvard and Frank Jewett from Bell (Zachary, 1997).
ii. the production of sufficient numbers of appropriately-qualified
graduates to meet industry demand.
This point begs questions about the purposes of undergraduate and postgraduate
education in Australia? Are they changing? How do they differ? What are
issues of process? What are issues of content?
Content issues are often addressed in the professional degrees by professional
societies which register or license practitioners. Process issues have
been analysed in numerous studies with the responses from industry remaining
remarkably constant (cf. Harman and Meek, 2000: 49; Sekhon and Shannon,
1985). What is remarkable is the apparent conflict between the expectations
of industry and those of academics (Anderson et al, 2000: 27).
Conclusion
If much of this submission has been filtered through the eyes of a private
provider of higher education, it is because the capacity of some of Australia’s
public universities to meet parts of the country’s higher education
needs could be seriously threatened if private providers decided to take
a case to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Such a case
might seek a judgement about whether a principle of competitive neutrality
has been breached if a public provider were to use publicly funded equipment
to cross-subsidise a course which is in direct competition with one provided
by a private provider of higher education.
Furthermore, there is also competition for private providers from the
commercial arms of public universities which have an immediate advantage
by virtue of their association with the university which is able to accredit
the courses run by the commercial arm (even though there may be no flow
of public funding to these enterprises). From the viewpoint of a small
private providers it is not a level playing field since they have fair
and rigorous, but lengthy, external accreditation processes to follow.
While principles of competitive neutrality between higher education institutions
must be considered on the basis of comparing like with like, and the public
institutions are multidisciplinary and generally larger, a number of private
higher education providers are now also multidisciplinary and all their
resources have been obtained privately.
To introduce true competition a solution might be a limited voucher scheme
(despite the ideological opposition to the notion). A limited voucher
scheme could guarantee to existing public providers that they would not
receive less than their current funding. This would go some way to reducing
the historical inequities within the Unified National System. There could
also be upper limits on the numbers of available vouchers in any field
so that student demand and workforce needs are not too mismatched.
The more fundamental questions remain to be answered though about the
nature and purpose of higher education in Australia and how it can be
developed to match the world’s best during the twenty first century.
It is to be hoped that this Senate Committee Enquiry will attempt to do
this. It does not matter that the answers may not please everyone. What
does matter is that there is a sense of vision, of leadership, and collating
the accumulated wisdom of the many official enquiries of recent years.
References
Anderson, Don, Johnson, Richard & Milligan, Bruce. 2000. Quality
Assurance and Accreditation in Australian Higher Education: An Assessment
of Australian and International Practice. Canberra: Evaluations &
Investigations Programme, Department of Education and Youth Affairs, Commonwealth
of Australia.
Group of Eight. 2000. Imperatives and Principles for Policy Reform
in Australian Higher Education. Mauka, ACT: Group of Eight.
Harman, Grant & Meek, V Lynn. 2000. Repositioning Quality Assurance
and Accreditation in Australian Higher Education. Canberra: Evaluations
& Investigations Programme, Department of Education and Youth Affairs,
Commonwealth of Australia.
Labaree, David F. 2000. Resisting Educational Standards. Phi Delta
Kappan. 82(1): 28-33.
Sekhon, JG & Shannon, AG. 1985. Mathematical Education of Engineers:
An Australian Perspective. European Journal of Engineering Education.
10: 295-303.
Sperber, Murray. 2000. End the Mediocrity of Our Public Universities.
The Chronicle of Higher Education. 47(8): B24.
West, Roderick (Chair). 1998. Learning for Life: Final Report of the
Review of Higher Education Financing and Policy. Canberra: Department
of Education and Youth Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia.
Zachary, P.G. 1997. Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the
American Century. New York: The Free Press.