Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small
Business and Education Committee
28 February 2001
The
Secretary
Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business
and Education References Committee
Suite S1.61 Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600
RE: Submission to the Senate Inquiry into Higher Education on behalf
of the Australasian Association of Philosophy
The Australasian Association of Philosophy is the professional association
of those involved in philosophical teaching and research in Australia
and New Zealand and serves as the over-arching organizational body for
the discipline of philosophy in Australian and New Zealand universities.
The Association thus has a special interest in the funding and general
operating circumstances of Australian universities, particularly as it
affects the discipline of philosophy, as well as having access to a great
deal of information and expertise in relation to this matter.
Although the Australian philosophical community is relatively small,
its international standing is very high. Australian philosophers have
had a major international impact in a number of areas from ethics to the
philosophy of mind and Australian philosophy departments fare extremely
well in international comparisons – for instance, a recent ranking
of graduate programs placed the philosophy program at the ANU as one of
the best in the world outside the US. The journal of the Australasian
Association for Philosophy is one of the oldest international philosophical
journals in the world and also highly respected, while Australian philosophers
have generally higher rates of publication in international journals,
in proportional terms, than do philosophers from other countries. Indeed,
the achievements of Australian philosophy are recognised in some of the
Government's own research papers which have specifically noted philosophy
as an area of Australian research strength.
However, the international standing of Australian philosophy and the
capacity of Australian philosophy to maintain high standards of teaching
and research has been seriously compromised over recent years. This is
not merely a problem for the discipline itself, but for Australia as a
whole. The interdisciplinary character of philosophy means that it has
an important role to play in many areas of research in both the natural
and social sciences, in the elaboration and exploration of the methodological
and theoretical underpinnings of almost all human activities, in the exploration
of basic issues concerning the nature and significance of human life and
reality, and in the exploration of questions of ethics and morality. The
difficulties facing philosophy in Australian universities also mirror
much broader difficulties facing Australian higher education in general.
While the submission below has been organized around the inquiry’s
terms of reference, there are four broad issues that the AAP would like
to bring to the attention of the inquiry:
- The need for increased levels of basic funding within the sector to
ensure adequate ongoing support for research and teaching
- The need for greater recognition of the differences between disciplines
and disciplinary groups particularly in relation to research
- The need for greater recognition of the special needs of regional
universities
- The need for improved consultation and communication between government
and the university sector as a whole (including the Academies and other
professional and disciplinary associations)
(a) Adequacy of current funding arrangements
Although there has been an increase in the number of universities and
numbers of students over the last ten years, there has also been a corresponding
decline in university funding in real terms. This is most clearly reflected
in increases in staff-student ratios. In Philosophy, staff-student ratios
have in many cases more than doubled over the last ten years. Moreover,
in disciplines like Philosophy, where the emphasis is on the development
of skills rather than simply the acquisition of information, and where
small group discussion is an integral part of the learning process, increases
in staff-student rations have a particularly adverse effect. Increases
in staff-student ratios are, of course, directly related to the reductions
in staffing that can be seen across many institutions, faculties and departments.
To cite a couple of examples: the Department of Philosophy at La Trobe
University, previously one of the strongest Philosophy Departments in
Australasia, has been reduced by nearly one half since 1982 with an even
greater increase in the staff-student ratio – from 9.5 in 1982 to
20.9 in 1998; the University of Western Australia has gone from 7 to 5
staff over the same period with an increase in the staff-student ratio
from 14-1 to 22-1. Moreover, it seems likely that if data were available
on the period prior to 1989 one would indeed see even larger shifts in
the comparative staff-student ratios.
Current funding arrangements are problematic for a number of reasons:
- The attempt to identify separate funding streams for teaching and
research (a feature of the research funding model set out in the White
Paper) is artificial, impractical and is not consistent with either
the way in which research and teaching is actually undertaken or with
the institutional arrangements within Australian higher education. The
Australian university system, rather like the German as well as the
British and, to some extent, the American, has generally operated through
institutions in which teaching and research are undertaken together.
There are many reasons for viewing such a system as the optimal one
– there are, for instance, important synergies that obtain between
teaching and research that would be lost if they were segregated –
but within such a system research and teaching cannot be simply separated,
since often the same resources will support both research and teaching
activities, while in most situations teaching and research activities
are themselves mutually supporting.
- The way in which research funding is tied to research inputs rather
than research outputs means that levels of research funding do not always
stand in any direct relation to actual research productivity. Indeed,
in some cases research productivity may actually be discouraged as more
emphasis is placed on the generation of research funds than on the production
of real research outcomes. Moreover, the current system of research
performance measures provides no indication of research quality, but
is purely quantitative. This is in marked contrast to, for instance,
the UK system of research assessment in which the assessment of research
performance is conducted by panels of disciplinary experts and a real
attempt is made to match funding with actual quality of research performance.
- Current systems of research funding allocation make no allowance for
differences between disciplines. Under the research funding mechanisms
established by the White Paper research funding is based on a combination
of the following: capacity to generate external funding, research higher
degree completions and publications. The funding mechanism applies in
the same way to all disciplines – "one size fits all"
– and ostensibly ties research funding to research performance.
In fact, as noted above, it is tied not to research performance as such,
but partly to research performance as measured through publications
and RHD completions, and partly through the capacity to generate external
funding to support research activity.
Not only is this approach applied across the board, but it is a mechanism
that institutionalizes measures of research activity (and so mechanisms
of research funding) that bear little relation to actual research practice
in humanities and social science disciplines, including philosophy,
but appear rather to reflect practices in the sciences and some applied
areas. Disciplines such as philosophy – and even more so in the
case of English, history or languages – generally have only a limited
capacity to generate external funding especially industry based funding.
Publishing practices in these disciplines also differ from those in
the sciences, while rates of publication are generally much lower. These
differences are largely a result of differences in the character of
the intellectual work involved in the different discipline areas.
Humanities and Social Science researchers are more included to work
alone rather than as members of a research team; publications are usually
single rather than jointly authored; in disciplines like philosophy,
research is itself a process of reading and writing, reflection and
discussion, that is more akin to creative processes in the arts than
to the experimental work typical of the sciences. As a result of such
differences, any single publication within a Humanities or Social Science
discipline is generally a much longer and more substantial piece of
work than any single publication in a science discipline; there is more
emphasis on book publication (as opposed to the articles which are more
the norm in science); edited volumes are more common and editing is
itself viewed as a significant research activity (perhaps akin to being
project leader in a scientific research team); reviews are a more important
research activity (especially for younger academics) than in the sciences.
Under the current arrangements, not only does DETYA employ a purely
quantitative assessment of research performance based solely in numbers
of refereed articles and books, but it recognizes only a limited number
of categories of publication as "research" and excludes from
its definition of research, among other things, reviews and edited volumes,
that are important to research in Humanities and Social Sciences. Moreover,
if we turn to the third element in the measure of research activity
under the current system, RHD completions, this measure also gives a
relative disadvantage to disciplines like philosophy in which RHD work
generally takes longer (for much the same reasons that publication in
general is slower) and in which there are higher rates of withdrawal
in virtue of the different character of the work (there is, in many
respects, much more pressure on the individual researcher).
The simple fact, then, is that research funding is currently determined
by a set of measures that neither reflect actual research practice in
social science and humanities disciplines nor track real research quality.
This ought to be viewed as an extremely serious inadequacy in the current
system.
- The recent Government "Innovation Statement", while it is
to be welcomed for the stimulus it will eventually provide in science
and technology, nevertheless falls far short of addressing the serious
infrastructure problems now facing universities as a result of the real
decrease in basic funding for research and teaching across the board.
The Statement also appears to almost completely ignore the serious funding
crisis in non-science and technology areas.
- There are project-specific funding sources available to Humanities
and Social Science disciplines, such as philosophy, via the ARC grant
schemes (Now known as "Linkage" and "Discovery"),
and philosophy, in particular, has a good record of success in gaining
such funding. However, access to ARC funding does not compensate for
the decline in basic infrastructure funding, while the increasing importance
of ARC grants also presents certain problems in itself. In contrast
to the situation in the United States, where there are separate funding
bodies, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, that have
responsibility for different discipline areas, the ARC is essentially
a generic funding body that covers all disciplines and employs a single
set of application, assessment and granting procedures.
There have always been difficulties in gaining ARC acceptance of the
particular research needs of Humanities and Social Science research.
In particular, Humanities and Social Science research requires one thing
above all else: time. This is an absolutely basic requirement and it
is also a requirement that is increasingly difficult to meet under current
conditions. For most academics the only way to gain this precious commodity
is through relief from teaching. However, ARC guidelines have tended
to regard requests for teaching relief unfavorably and in recent years
to allow it only under special circumstances. Since it is difficult
for Humanities and Social Science researchers to gain from the ARC the
one thing that they most need, Humanities and Social Science research
applications are generally constructed in ways that do not actually
reflect the real character of Humanities and Social Science research.
While this will continue to be a further source of comparative disadvantage
to Humanities and Social Science researchers, it also seems likely that
it will, in the long term, actually result in a change in such research
as it is forced to increasingly emulate the science-based model that
seems to be taken as the norm.
- It should also be noted that one of the factors affecting the decline
funding within the sector in real terms has been the government’s
refusal to fully fund salary increases for staff. Whatever the reasons
that lie behind this decision, the real effect has been to place further
pressure on an already stressed system. Moreover, the idea that salary
increases should be partially funded from productivity increases within
the sector is fundamentally flawed: education is an area in which there
is little scope for increases in productivity, at least in relation
to teaching and learning, without reductions in quality. In fact, one
of the ironies of the changes imposed on the higher education sector
over recent years has been that the increasing emphasis on quality and
accountability, coupled with an emphasis on university "reform",
has led to an increasingly dysfunctional system and to a general decline,
particular in the Humanities and Social Sciences, in the quality of
teaching and in the quality and quantity of research.
(b) Effect of increasing reliance on private funding and market behaviour
Given the historically low levels of private sector investment in research
and higher education in Australia, it is clearly an important priority
for any government that it lift the level of such investment. This cannot
be done overnight, however, and it may well be the case that Australia
will never develop the strong private commitment to higher education that
exists, most notably, in the US. There are, in any case, a number of problems
associated with the current emphasis on increasing private sector funding:
- As is already becoming evident in the US, the development of closer
relations between university researchers and industry partners can give
rise to questions about the integrity and objectivity of the research
undertaken. There have already been cases in the US where industry-sponsored
research has been suppressed or manipulated by the industry sponsor
in order to advance commercial interests. Many companies also insist
on delays in the publication of research findings thereby preventing
the rapid dissemination of research results to the rest of the research
community – something that can seriously impede research productivity
and may even, in some cases, endanger lives. One of the major reasons
for maintaining a strong publicly funded research capacity in our universities
is precisely to ensure that the integrity and objectivity of research
is not compromised by commercial interest and that knowledge is available
to all. Not only is this increasingly at risk through the pressure on
universities to engage in industry partnerships, but it is also threatened
by the pressure on universities to become increasingly protective of,
and to exploit, the intellectual property produced by their staff.
- The capacity to generate external funding, especially industry funding,
and to develop close relations with business, is not the same for all
disciplines. Indeed, those disciplines that have a strong science and
technology orientation are generally much more able to generate such
income and to develop such relations than are disciplines within the
social sciences and humanities including philosophy. Such differences
in the character of disciplines is largely ignored in current government
policy. Indeed, the incentives under the current system are such that
universities are effectively encouraged to redirect their activities
away from humanities and social science and increasingly towards science,
technology and other more "industry oriented" areas. These
same incentives are also leading many universities to pressure social
science and humanities disciplines to reorient teaching and research
programmes in ways that will better fit with the government emphasis
on private funding generation and development of industry partnerships.
This is of serious concern within disciplines like philosophy since
it threatens to undermine the integrity of those disciplines, and is
likely also to lead to a narrowing in research and teaching. Important
areas of research and teaching may well be neglected or even lost entirely.
- In emphasizing those disciplines and areas of university activity
that are business or industry-oriented, government policy also encourages
the deeply problematic idea that knowledge is only useful insofar as
it has economic potential. In combination with shifts within universities
themselves that increasingly direct students towards more vocationally
and business-oriented courses, as well as changes in funding structures
and student load targets, this also has the effect, in some cases, of
actually discouraging enrolments in social science and humanities courses.
Moreover, in many cases Universities have deliberately reduced their
intake into generalist programmes such as the BA – Macquarie University,
for instance, has recently decreased its intake into the BA programme
in order to direct the enrolments elsewhere and this has had a marked
impact on the number of commencing students in Philosophy at that university.
Yet at the same time as students are being directed away from Humanities
and Social Science studies, those very disciplines are taking on an
even greater significance. The new challenges and technologies of the
21st century will demand new social, political and ethical responses
that will only come from the Humanities and Social Sciences. The most
important issues that face contemporary Australia are actually issues
that have no direct economic or business connection – issues of
identity, of history and culture. The skills that are increasingly needed
in the workplace are not skills that tie one into a particular area
of work, but rather basic skills of thinking, problem solving, literacy
and numeracy that enable one to adapt to the ever-changing character
of modern life and work. These are precisely the skills that social
science and especially humanities education has always emphasized. They
are skills of special importance in philosophy.
It is notable that "traditional" liberal arts education remains
the basic form of education within the US higher education system as
it also remains basic to higher education in many other parts of the
world. Australia’s increasing emphasis on vocational training and
business oriented study is likely, in this respect, to lead to an unfortunate
narrowing in the educational background of Australian society and to
decrease levels of adaptability and creativity. Moreover, in forcing
our universities in the direction of increasing private funding and
business-oriented activity, we also run the real risk of losing the
capacity to engage with the broader ethical, social, historical and
political issues that are crucial to Australian life and culture. And
only if we have a capacity to engage with such issues will we have the
capacity to make decisions about the social, cultural and economic direction
of Australian society within which business and industry must operate
or about the ethical and moral frameworks within which all our activities
must be situated.
One other issue that might be taken to fall under this heading concerns
the increasing emphasis on the development of on-line learning. There
is no doubt that the development of web-based learning will have a major
effect on education in the years to come and is already having a significant
impact. However, government and universities need to be realistic in their
appraisal of the new technologies. On-line learning is most suitable only
in those areas of education that are strongly information-based or require
the mastery of simple routine skills or techniques. It is of little use
in areas where the emphasis is on the development of broader skills and
may actually hamper the development of a variety of more socially-oriented
capacities. Indeed, although social science and humanities disciplines
tend to be strongly text-based, they are generally poorly served by on-line
learning techniques and the attempt to impose such techniques onto the
learning situation within those disciplines can be extremely damaging.
Yet not only is the emphasis on on-line learning across the board problematic
for many disciplines, but it may also serve to encourage a shift in both
students and resources away from those disciplines and towards more "web-friendly"
areas of study. While on-line learning represents an important tool especially
in relation to improved access to educational opportunities in some areas,
it is also a more limited tool than many commentators seem to recognize.
Clearly there are dangers in assuming that the virtual university is the
way of the future. It may well lead to further undermining of those disciplines
that place emphasis on skills of dialogue, thought, reading and writing
and that require interaction between real people. Moreover, as the Chancellor
of the University of California at Berkeley, Robert Berdahl, has remarked,
the idea of the virtual university may also serve to encourage disinvestment
in public education giving rise to a two-tiered educational system in
which a few have access to live teaching and real minds and the many have
to make do with software alone (Remarks to the National Press Club, Washington
DC, June 2, 1999).
(c) Public liability consequences of private, commercial activities
of universities
As noted above, increased emphasis on universities as business enterprises
and the pressure to generate external funding and to develop industry
partnerships all combine to threaten the objectivity and integrity that
has traditionally been associated with university-based research. But
as universities are increasingly required to operate either in commercial
partnerships or in competition with other business organizations, so too
is there the potential for serious conflict of interest at a variety of
levels. In the US this has arisen in respect of the tax-exempt status
of universities which seems inconsistent with the increasing emphasis
on the commercial role of universities.
The problem is simple: the tax exempt status of universities reflect
the idea that they operate for the public good; when they operate as commercial
enterprises or in partnership with commercial organizations, they are
no longer operating for the public good, but in a way almost indistinguishable
from any other publicly-owned business. A similar conflict of interest
may become a serious problem, not only in respect of research, but also
in relation to teaching. Indeed, the current controversy over marking
standards is one reflection of this. The question is whether universities
have an obligation to the community that goes beyond the obligations of
any mere commercial enterprise.
(d) Equality of opportunity to participate in higher education
Along with many other humanities and social science disciplines, philosophy
attracts a high proportion of female and mature age students. One reason
for this is that many people only begin reflecting on philosophical issues
after some experience of life – often this is a result of the encounter
with particular ethical or philosophical difficulties in connection with
professional practice in areas such as nursing, law or even business.
Moreover, since there is a stronger emphasis, in disciplines like philosophy,
on capacities for reflection and dialogue that typically come only with
greater maturity, so these disciplines very often attract students whose
real abilities only become evident late in their undergraduate careers.
The general tendency to adopt a "one-size-fits-all" approach
at almost all levels within higher education seriously disadvantages students
in these categories.
The Research "Training" Scheme provides one example of the
way in which such disadvantage might arise. Humanities and social science
students generally take longer to complete and have higher withdrawal
rates – a fact that is a standard feature of these disciplines not
only in Australia but also in the US (indeed, in the US completion rates
appear to be much higher than in Australia – closer to 6-8 years
as against 4-5). However, since the current Research "Training"
Scheme does not discriminate between students from different disciplinary
areas, but imposes the same requirements on all, the practical effect
is to discourage universities from enrolling students in disciplines that
have lower completion or higher withdrawal rates – including disciplines
such as philosophy. Since these are also disciplines with higher mature
age and female enrolments this will have the practical effect of decreasing
female and mature age representation within higher education. In this
respect, current research training arrangements constitute a serious equity
problem for the university sector as a whole – a problem that has
not so far been given serious recognition.
(e) Factors affecting the ability of Australian universities to attract
staff
The Australian philosophical community, while internationally quite influential,
is nevertheless relatively small. However, in recent years there has been
a worrying loss of staff, especially senior staff, to overseas positions
in the US and UK. A summary of recent movements into and out of the Australian
philosophical community at senior levels over recent years is as follows:
Outgoing since 1998
1998 Jay Garfield left a chair at Tasmania, now in a chair at SMITH COLLEGE,
USA
1998 Gerry Gaus left a chair at QUT, now in a chair at TULANE, USA
1998 Richard Holton left a senior lectureship at Monash, now a reader
at EDINBURGH, UK
1998 Liz Grosz left a chair at Monash, now in a chair at Buffalo, USA.
1998 Andre Gallois left an Associate Professorship at Queensland for
a chair at KEELE.
1998 Rae Langton left a senior lectureship at Monash, now in a chair
at EDINBURGH, UK
1999 Peter Singer left a chair at Monash, now in a chair at PRINCETON,
USA
1999 Greg Currie left a chair at Flinders, now in a chair at NOTTINGHAM,
UK
1999 Udo Schuklenk left a senior lectureship in the Centre for Human
Bio-Ethics at Monash to become head of Bio-ethics, University of Witwatersrand
Medical Faculty, SOUTH AFRICA
2000 Chin Liew Ten left a chair at Monash Philosophy for a chair at National
University of SINGAPORE
2000 Paul Griffiths left a senior lectureship at Sydney, going to a Full
Professorship at PITTSBURGH, USA
2001 Huw Price leaves a chair at Sydney, going to a chair at EDINBURGH,
UK
2001 Suzanne Uniacke leaves an Associate Professorship at the University
of Wollongong to take up a readership at the University of HULL
Incoming since 1998
1999 David Braddon-Mitchell left a senior lectureship at Auckland for
a lectureship at Sydney.
2001 Martin Davies left a readership at Oxford for a chair at the Research
School of Social Science, ANU
This suggests a ratio of outgoing to incoming staff of at least 6-1 (13
out and 2 in). In this connection it is also worth noting that there are
currently some nine chairs around the country that have been frozen or
lost with the resignation or retirement of their incumbents (Flinders,
La Trobe, Wollongong, New South Wales, Sydney [Challis Professorship],
Macquarie, QUT, ANU [faculties]). Moreover, this list takes no account
of staff who have resigned and left academia altogether – anecdotal
evidence suggests this number is quite high. While it is much harder to
track the movement of junior staff, the indications are that there is
a net loss at lower levels also.
A variety of factors lie behind the loss of staff. While increasingly
poor salary differentials play some part, a more important factor would
seem to be the generally poor conditions that now obtain in most Australian
universities. The deterioration in conditions is related to:
- Generally decreasing levels of funding for teaching and research
- Increasing administrative and bureaucratic requirements coupled with
the imposition of inappropriate and usually poorly-adapted managerial
structures
- Increasing pressure on staff to undertake more and varied duties (often
far removed from core teaching and research)
- Increasing distrust of university administration and governmental
policy
- General decline in morale and job satisfaction related to all of the
above and identified as a feature of Australian academia in a number
of surveys over recent years.
(f) Capacity of universities to contribute to economic growth
Universities play an important role in contributing to economic growth
in a variety of different ways – through providing assistance to
industry, through the research that leads to new commercial opportunities,
through the provision of training and expertise and also through direct
economic stimulus. Indeed, in many regional areas (and this includes Tasmania
in which there is only one university for the entire state), universities
play an especially important role in supporting and stimulating regional
economies and in supporting and stimulating the cultural and intellectual
infrastructure that is essential for healthy and innovative communities.
However, if universities, especially regional universities, are to play
their proper role in this regard then they need the flexibility to determine
priorities in accord with their particular situation; regional institutions
may well need additional resources to match the need for a greater diversity
of teaching and research capacities (where there is only one university
serving a large region, such diversity is especially important); they
also need a sufficiency of resources so that a real culture of innovation
and creativity can be maintained. Low morale and low levels of support
are currently stifling the culture of innovation that has for so long
been a feature of Australian higher education.
(g) Regulation of the higher education sector
The introduction of particular managerial and administrative techniques
to Australian universities has been a source of major concern to many
academics. The problem is not that Australian academics resist administrative
or managerial reform, but rather that the managerial techniques that have
been introduced have, for the most part, been derived from fairly narrow
and philosophically impoverished managerial or frameworks. Australian
universities have increasingly moved to centralized structures that give
prominence to top-down management styles based in a conception of management
that has long since ceased to be fashionable. Such centralized management
has given rise to a number of problems:
- University administration is driven by priorities that often conflict
with or take little account of the academic priorities of research and
teaching staff; this has lead to an increasing gulf between the academic
and administrative sections within universities – something attested
by high levels of academic staff dissatisfaction within universities
- Processes of communication and consultation within universities tend
to operate poorly or not at all and the tendency is for senior management
to rely on compelling staff rather than consulting with them.
- Senior university management often have little or no understanding
of the real attitudes of staff or of the actual operational circumstances
within their institutions; decisions tend to be driven by governmentally-determined
priorities, rather than on the basis of specific institutional factors
and policies are often formulated which are ill-adapted to the practical
realities of teaching and research.
- The nature of universities as academic institutions that must abide
by certain academic and other standards sits awkwardly with the emphasis
on universities as needing to operate in a more entrepreneurial and
business-oriented fashion. Conflicts readily arise between the collegiality
that is required by the academic and discipline-based modes of proceeding
that are an essential part of the proper functioning of universities
and the narrow "top-down" managerialism that has become common
in university administration.
The difficulties that have arisen in relation to internal university
administration are also reflected in government regulation of the university
sector, especially in relation to research. As senior administrators have
become isolated from the academic life of their institutions, so has government
come to operate at a remove from the realities of university research
and teaching, while consultation and communication between government
and universities is often poor and new policy directions are most often
imposed on the sector rather than properly negotiated. Moreover the tendency
for increased government control and direction of the higher education
sector that has been a feature of university life over the last ten years
also presents a special problem that arises in virtue of the very way
knowledge itself develops. The development of new knowledge is such that
we can never predict what ideas will matter in the future nor what ideas
will be most productive. The only rational strategy, therefore, is to
provide as much scope to the development of ideas as possible. However,
this requires a fair degree of financial and administrative freedom on
the part of the individuals and institutions that undertake research;
it requires the maintenance of a reasonable diversity of disciplines within
institutions (in part, to facilitate intellectual cross-fertilization)
and a reasonable spread of university resources across the community,
rather than merely in certain centralized locations. The promotion of
a broad range of research and teaching options and the provision of an
environment that supports ideas and intellectual endeavor is just that
at which universities have traditionally aimed. In this respect, the real
idea that ought to lie at the heart of the university is much the same
idea that also drives John Stuart Mill’s thinking in his famous essay
‘On Liberty’.
Transposing the liberal philosophy of the market to the realm of ideas,
Mill argues that the only way to ensure the best outcomes in the search
for new and fruitful ideas is to maintain as much freedom in the marketplace
of ideas as possible. Universities are one of the main mechanisms by which
that market is sustained and supported and the university can itself be
seen as a miniature version of such a marketplace – although this
Millian view of how to promote intellectual innovation and advance is
also a key element in the success of many large business enterprises –
at least those that can provide the resources to fund speculative research.
Of course the rhetoric of the market and of business has become commonplace
in the contemporary university: but is usually a rhetoric derived from
a narrow understanding of the nature of business (it usually fails to
understand the nature of the business in which the university is engaged),
while it completely ignores the market of ideas that is really determinative
of university activity. In this respect the AAP would strongly support
a less directive role for government in higher education coupled with
improved levels of government support. This may seem like wishful thinking,
but it is also follows directly from consideration of the way in which
intellectual development and innovation actually occurs.
(h) Nature and sufficiency of independent advice to government on
higher education
A major concern of the Association is the almost complete lack of independent
advice to government on higher education. Indeed, there has been an increasing
tendency for government to view its relation with universities and with
academic groups in general as an antagonistic one and to increasingly
source information and advice "in-house" or from parallel government
bodies overseas, particularly in the UK. Since many policy advisors within
government have little or no up-to-date experience of or first-hand knowledge
of the operational conditions currently obtaining in Australian universities
– particularly in relation to research – policy formulation
often seems to take place in a vacuum removed from the realities of real
university activity. The Association also notes the unreliability and
relative poverty of quantitative data available on the actual operation
of Australian universities. This is something that became especially evident
in the course of preparing this submission.
The Association itself began a process of data collection in 2000, but
has been unable to find any reliable source of disciplinary-specific data
on issues such as staff-student ratios, administrative loads and so forth
prior to this date. Not only is there no one source for such data, but
the ongoing state of change that has characterized higher education over
the last ten years has also meant that what data is available is generally
unreliable – there have been too many shifts in, for instance, organizational
structures and methods of reporting to be able to be sure of meaningful
comparisons.
Given the absence of adequate data on what is actually happening within
the sector at all levels, the Association believes that the radical approach
to higher education policy formulation that has been seen over recent
years is highly irresponsible. Moreover, it may be that there will always
be difficulties in gaining accurate and reliable quantitative data of
the sort that is required. This makes it even more important that government
establish and maintain open channels of communication with universities
and other higher education bodies. The Association also believes that
it would also be extremely beneficial for there to be increased involvement
from professional associations themselves in the provision of advice and
information, and in the formulation, and perhaps even implementation,
of new policy directions.
Yours sincerely
Dr Deborah Brown, University of Queensland
Associate Professor Fred D'Agostino, University of New England
Professor Peter Forrest, University of New England
Professor Jeff Malpas, University of Tasmania
Dr Tim Oakley, LaTrobe University
Professor Graham Priest, University of Melbourne, Chair of AAP Council
Professor Kim Sterelny, Victoria University of Wellington, AAP President
Dr Marion Tapper, University of Melbourne
The above comprise the AAP Council as at February 2001