Submission by the Deakin University Student Association to the enquiry by the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education References into the capacity of public universities to meet Australia’s higher education needs

March 2001

Introduction: Deakin University and Australian higher education

This submission expresses a belief that the current state of higher education in Australia, and the particular difficulties that Deakin University faces, are the result of a failure of political leadership by successive governments. Australian politicians have failed to acknowledge as legitimate the clear demand of Australian citizens education to be a priority area of government policy. In this as on many issues the Australian population have shown themselves to be more insightful than Canberra elites. The response of political elites towards a failing education system has been to deny the legitimacy of collective action through the political process. Not surprisingly Australians have increasingly asked what their political leaders are for if they fail to lead. The result has been growing disillusion with the political process. A renewed commitment by Australian governments to employing education for nation building has the chance to address this disillusion.

This submission outlines the role and aspirations of the Deakin University Student Association, the position of Deakin University with in the contemporary Australian higher education system and how successive governments have failed Deakin University and Deakin students. There may be an entity called ‘Deakin University’ for the foreseeable future, but the long-term survival of Deakin University as a University in the full sense of the word, with a range of Faculties and a strong research base, is under threat. In ten years time Deakin may comprise no more than few professional training schools and an on-line presence competing for the lower end of the corporate training dollar. This outcome would be a result of the current drive towards a purely market driven higher education system. Given the energy and dedication that staff and students have put into Deakin since 1977 this would be a tragic outcome.

The Deakin University Student Association

The Deakin University Student Association (DUSA) is the representative body for students at all the campuses of Deakin University. All enrolled Deakin students are members of DUSA, except those who opt out of membership for conscientious reasons. DUSA provides a range of services for students, from academic support, to social and sporting activities and supports a wide range of student clubs and societies. DUSA also provides support for student representatives on university boards and committees. 

This year is DUSA’s first year of operation. Prior to this year each Deakin campus had its own student association and a cross-campus council sought to represent student interests to the University. The establishment of DUSA reflected the majority view of Deakin students that the existing structure of separate student associations at each Deakin campus had hampered their ability to effectively represent student concerns to the University and the community. DUSA has a governing council of 15 students elected by all students. To maximize participation by off-campus students DUSA conducted its first election by electronic means.  DUSA currently employs 229 staff, at locations in Burwood, Clayton, Geelong and Warrnambool.

This submission expresses DUSA’s values: 

Equal and free access to the highest quality scholarship, teaching and research
Respect for the diversity of students, their interests and their cultures
The pursuit of equity, social responsibility and good citizenship
A positive environment for learning, study and student life

Deakin University

Deakin University is a multicampus institution, which opened for classes in 1977. In 1990 it merged with the Warrnambool Institute of Advanced Education and in 1992 it merged with Victoria College, a group of former teacher colleges located in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. Since 1990-92 the University has been substantially restructured, and now has six campuses: Warrnambool, Geelong (Waurn Ponds), Geelong (Waterfront), Melbourne (Burwood), Rusden (Clayton) and Toorak. On-campus students are no longer enrolled at the Toorak campus, which is now employed for foundation studies for international students and for administrative operations. The Rusden campus is to close at the end of 2001. 

From its inception Deakin had a strong commitment to off-campus education. It has preserved this focus, although in recent years it has placed increasing emphasis on the use of Information Technology (IT) to deliver course materials in this area rather than the traditional form of correspondence education. Deakin began with a strong emphasis on the generalist arts and sciences and education. Since the mergers of 1990-92 the University has shifted its focus towards a greater emphasis on professional education. The University has also aggressively pursued international student enrolment. The total number of students at Deakin has increased from 23543 in 1992 to 29545 in 2001, and in 2001 the full-time equivalent number of students in 2001 was 19496.

Since 1990-92 Deakin has substantially extended its activities in fee-paying courses and undertaken a major redevelopment program on the Melbourne campus financed from its own resources. Unlike other Melbourne universities the Burwood (Melbourne) campus of Deakin has not had its major buildings provided by government and has had to finance a substantial redevelopment program from its own resources.  

In many respects Deakin and its student population represents the face of contemporary Australian higher education. Its students include the traditional constituency of school leavers studying on metropolitan campuses, and regional students drawn from areas adversely affected by recent transformations in the Australian economy. Among non school-leaver students Deakin also enrolls a growing number of students engaged in lifelong learning and the updating of professional qualifications. Deakin also enrolls a high portion of fee-paying international students.

Since 1987 Australian higher education has undergone a program of radical change from an elite to a mass-based system. Deakin has been at the centre of that transformation. Of the 19 universities that existed in 1987, Deakin has probably undergone the most radical change since then. It has changed from a single-campus regional university to a multi-campus institution with its major centre of on-campus students now located in Melbourne. The transformation of higher education in the decade after 1987 potentially opened new options for hundreds of thousands of Australians previously been excluded from higher education. But the failure of successive governments to back their verbal commitment to increasing levels of university education, and greater access and equity, with adequate levels of funding meant that the transformation had a negative impact on Deakin University. 

Much of what was positive in the pre-1987 University system was lost as administrators grappled with the task of handling much higher student numbers with inadequate resources. The achievement of university administrators in handling this influx has not been adequately acknowledged.The influx of students into higher education was driven in large part by the decline of youth employment opportunities. The upsurge in economic activity over recent years has contributed to the slowing of enrolment growth. It has revealed the need for Australian higher education to provide a positive point of attraction. 

A vision for higher education

The formation of an effective national education policy requires a clear understanding of the role of higher education. Unfortunately current national policy lacks a clear understanding of why higher education is important. The 2001-2003 triennium report of the Department of Employment Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) lists a group of potentially conflicting objectives:

•	Inspire and enable individuals to develop their capacities to the highest potential throughout their lives

•	Advance knowledge and understanding

•	Aid the application of knowledge and understanding to the benefit of the economy and society

•	Enable individuals to adapt and learn, consistent with the needs of an adaptable knowledge-based economy at local, regional and national levels

•	Enable individuals to contribute to a democratic, civilized society and promote the tolerance and debate that underpins it

These are worthy objectives, if unclearly stated, but an infinite variety of similar objectives could be proposed. From the perspective of Deakin University, a University that claims a specifically vocational focus, it is apparent that much of the current debate about higher education has taken the form of an unhelpful polarization between practical and theoretical knowledge. Australia requires both an informed and active citizenry and one that is capable of changing the environment to improve its condition. What distinguishes humans from any form of life on the planet is the ability to transform their environment and critically reflect on their reasons for doing so. As Australians look to the new millennium they can learn from the experience of the twentieth century. This century saw massive increases in living standards and the raising of thousands of millions of men and women from a life of exhausting toil and early death, but it was also a century in which human intelligence was applied to the mass destruction of human life and the deliberate infliction of suffering on an unprecedented scale. Human progress can only be based on a combination of the pursuit of what Max Weber called formal and substantive rationality, both how to do things and why we do them and an effective education system is central to this. Australian universities should aim to produce students that are capable of acting upon the world but are capable of reflecting why they do so. When men and women as citizens express support for the objective of a higher national profile for education they recognise that education is about expanding our knowledge both of the natural world and of ourselves. 

Deakin’s policies express a commitment that Deakin graduates should be ethically informed and globally aware but increasingly this objective is honoured in the breach. This fact reflects does not reflect on the caliber and integrity of Deakin administrators but rather a failure of national political leadership, which has starved universities of the resources required to achieve their mission. With greater or lesser degrees of reluctance Australian university administrators have undertaken a range of ultimately self-defeating strategies to secure the resources that governments have denied them. Over the last twenty years political elites have denied the legitimacy of collective choice, the values that citizens seek to express through the ballot box have been regarded as illegitimate compared to the outcome of market forces. 

This reliance on market forces has been despite the fact that there are sound reasons in economic theory to question the role of market forces in education. It is not the objective of this submission to provide a summary of contemporary microeconomic theory, but Committee members should remember that education is about the creation of information, an intangible public good. The distinctive characteristics of the production of knowledge render incorrect any attempt to apply simplistic market models. Committee members might consider the work of the former chief economist for the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz in this area. At an Economic Planning Advisory Council seminar in the late 1980s a senior Treasury official argued that there was no difference from a policy perspective between fundamental technological innovations, such as the shift towards high technology and knowledge intensive industries, and ‘innovations’ such as the changing of the smell of aftershave from lemon to lime. The obvious fallacy of this statement brings out the significant fact that market forces by themselves are good to encourage certain sorts of change, such as responses to exogenously shifting consumer preferences for goods that are here today and gone tomorrow, but they are inadequate by themselves as a sound base for sustainable long-term development. The most recent triennium report of DETYA fails completely to consider the economic impact of education, apart from its impact on graduate salaries. In some cases market forces might encourage efficiency at the level of the individual firm but sustainable economic growth is dependent on productivity increases and technological change rather than just more investment. 

Unfortunately recent federal government education policy statements show little understanding of issues of economic theory. These statements argue that Universities by securing increasing private sector funding will end a relationship of dependence on the private sector, become ‘outward looking’ and enable the pursuit of ‘diverse missions.’ In fact the opposite will be the case university policy will be driven by conformity to the short-run objectives of individual firms. Policy makers are within their rights to espouse libertarian political theory as a justification for policy, but as Australian National University Professor of Economics Geoffrey Brennan has argued it should not be smuggled in under the banner of economic theory.

Discussion of selected terms of reference:

(a) The adequacy of current funding arrangements

Over recent years Deakin has been under steadily increasing financial pressure due to reduced federal government funding. From 1997 to 2000 the Commonwealth government reduced the operating grant and the number of HECS-liable places at Deakin by 5.6%. The condition that the reduction in subsisided places be absorbed entirely in the postgraduate area, presumably imposed for political reasons in the absence of any substantive educational justification, forced the conversion of many postgraduate courses to full fee-paying. Overall the number of EFTSU HECS places at Deakin will fall 6% from 1996 to 2002. At the same time Deakin had to meet enterprise bargaining increases with the result of an effective reduction in the government resources available to Deakin of 14%.  Last year Deakin had to commit itself to substantial further pay increases under a new enterprise bargaining agreement. The University’s acceptance of this agreement was in large part driven by the need to prevent staff leaving Deakin for better-paying opportunities with a consequent negative impact on research output. The salary bill is further increased by the requirement to pay higher salaries to staff as they improve their qualifications; Deakin has sought with considerable success to increase the number of academic staff with doctoral qualifications. 

The response of Deakin to the reductions in the DETYA operating grant to universities that began in 1997 was to accelerate the pursuit of fee-related income and to initiate additional redundancies and course reductions. For a time Deakin had considerable success in increasing fee-paying income, which rose 250% from 1995 to 1998. This increase was highest in the Business & Law faculty but ambitious targets were imposed on all faculties as a result of this early success, such as 10% per annum for Education in the 1999.  The response of the University to the increases promised in the most recent EBA has been to set plainly unfeasible targets for increases in fee income: a 76% increase in fee income 2000 to 2003 or 25% increases a year. This is despite the fact that the fee-raising bubble has in large part burst; Faculties have found that both individual students and corporate/professional clients have become increasingly resistant to paying higher fees. The Deakin Arts faculty lost its contract with the Army to the University of Canberra, despite the latter’s lack of expertise in the strategic studies area, and this was apparently due to the University of Canberra’s lower tender. The Vice-Chancellor has admitted that the Deakin University budgetary context for 2001 and beyond is the most uncertain for years, and that if targets to increase income from fees are not met than many jobs will be at risk. 

The impact of the financial stresses on Deakin is felt directly by staff. It is striking that the most national education policy statement of DETYA, the 2001-2003 Triennium statement, gives no attention to clear evidence of falling staff morale across Australian universities. In October 2000 Deakin staff were polled on their evaluation of the extent to which they thought achieving certain objectives was important and the extent to which they believed Deakin was achieving them. The survey revealed that staff members valued in particular honesty and integrity, a safe work environment and believed that Deakin was successful in these goals, but staff also wanted Deakin to provide satisfying jobs, fairness at work, an environment that valued employees and retained valued employees. But they believed that Deakin was failing to achieve these objectives.

This pressure upon staff will only increase as a result of the likelihood that targets for increased student fee income will not be met. All the faculties admit that they will struggle to meet fundraising targets. The position of Business & Law is strongest as its fee-paying students are more likely to receive financial support from their employers but other faculties, in particular Arts and Education, have found it more difficult to sell fee-paying courses. Public sector agencies, which are more likely to employ Arts and Education graduates, and more likely to employ women; have a poor record in supporting postgraduate study by their employees.  

The undermining of Arts and Education has been merely the latest stage in a process that has undermined those parts of the University that are deficient in raising fee-paying income. Increasingly Deakin, like many other universities, is ceasing to function as a unified whole. Simon Marginson and Mark Considine have outlined this process at the national level in their recent work The Enterprise University, which should be read by all Committee members. Deakin may eventually become no more than an agglomeration of separate business units, and at least one Faculty has announced a policy by which income and costs within the faculty are devolved as far as possible to centres that earn or incur them.  Student representatives are familiar with the argument often made by University administrators that the successful pursuit of private sector funds by Universities will raise funds that will be directed towards the support of those sections of the University that earn less external income. The record of Deakin demonstrates that even if this was the initial motive behind the pursuit of external income it is an aspiration that becomes progressively less important as the growing role of external funding forces a power shift within Universities away from academic goals and the further marginalisation of non-commercial areas. 

A clear example of the fate of areas deemed inessential at the new Deakin has been the Education faculty. From its inception Deakin developed a strong profile in educational research. As a new institution it was able to escape the constraints that existed on the Colleges of Advanced Education that were still adjusting themselves to the autonomy from the tight government control that had been exercised over teacher colleges.  The Deakin Education faculty developed an impressive record in citation and was considered one of the best in Australia, with an excellent international reputation.

The merger with Victoria College, which was focused towards teacher education, but not research, meant that the Education faculty was an early target for staff reductions. Staff numbers were halved from 1993 to 2000.  Even though these staff reductions were impelled by central University policy the debt burden of redundancies were charged to the Faculty, so that throughout the 1990s the faculty was unable to embark on any substantial expenditure initiatives, even though it had a sound current financial position. As a result by 2000 the faculty had a very high average of administrative staff per faculty members: 26.2 compared to university average of 20.8 and national average of 17.9. The Faculty shed many academic staff with a high research profile, which damaged its efforts in this area.  This decline of the Faculty’s research profile has gone on at the same time as Deakin has sought to develop strategies to improve its research performance, inspired by the belief that no leading university in the world that does not have outstanding performance in research. The Faculty has found itself very much at the back of the queue for building developments at the Melbourne campus.

The decline of the faculty was considered by an external review, in 2000, which concluded that it had the opportunity to ‘reestablish itself as Australia’s premier Faculty of Education.’ Unfortunately it was not within the review’s terms of reference to address why this had happened. The decline of the Education Faculty has been in contradiction to the national imperative of improving the status of teaching as a profession, which has been identified by a range of Australian and international commentators.  

State government education departments are also complicit in the decline of the status of teaching for they have failed to take up the slack in professional development resulting from the shift to fee-paying postgraduate qualifications.  The result has been that there has been little demand for fee-paying courses in Education. The University has contributed to this decline by withdrawing funding from the higher education stream in the Masters of Education (by coursework), which was developed as a contribution to academic development.

The Deakin faculty that has been most successful in the pursuit of external income is that of Business & Law, but its research performance is poor compared to other faculties. But the shift towards financial decentralisation within the University favours it at the expense of other Faculties. On occasion University leaders pay tribute to the performance of those areas of strength inherited from the old Deakin, such as sociology, where Deakin academics produced the leading Australian textbook: Sociology: Australian Connections, but this acknowledgement is not reflected in the power structure that underpins daily decision-making and which marginalises Faculties such as Education and Arts.

The fate of the Education faculty demonstrates the lower profile of education, the University’s core business. This is not an isolated case, and a further review of University performance demonstrates that the University is increasingly lending its name to a series of ventures that have little to do with the core business of a university: high quality teaching and learning. This shift in focus is at the expense of the quality of student’s experience at Deakin. 

Deakin has pursued the mantra of ‘flexible learning’ and the use of IT in teaching. In this it echoes federal government policy pronouncements, which assume entirely uncritically that flexible learning will have positive potential. At the level of high policy the University claims to recognise the importance of the on-campus experience and to believe that new technologies such as on-line learning should only be used where they bring about improvements in the quality of learning.  In practice Deakin has tended to employ on-line teaching as a substitute for face-to face contact rather than as a positive addition to the learning experience.

For off-campus students the development of new educational technologies has gone hand in hand with a decline in options. In the 1980s, during the allegedly archaic period of paper-based distance education, Deakin prided itself on delivering an exceptionally wide range of subjects to off-campus students. Deakin staff were inspired by their role in bringing tertiary education to many Australians who had missed out on a university experience; they knew that a mind was a terrible thing to waste. Since 1990-92 this ethical focus has been obscured in the rush to embrace ‘lifelong learning’. The focus of University attention for the off-campus market is now employed students who reside in major cities, especially in Melbourne and Sydney.  The image of the farmers’ wife opening her envelope of course materials is now considered old hat, to be replaced by the image of the professional studying on-line for his (and it is more likely to be him) narrowly specialised qualification. A 1999 document prepared within the marketing division believed that Deakin’s image, as a purveyor of off-campus education to mature-age students was a potential liability to Deakin’s image in the ‘corporate world’. 

Ironically at the same time as on-campus students face fewer options similar restrictions are imposed for off-campus students. The Arts Faculty has pursued a systemic strategy of rationalising off-campus units and shifting them in a specifically vocational direction. To be effective on-line technology requires more expenditure, not less. Indeed new technology in the Humanities, such as multi-media facilities, requires more expenditure and heightens the financial pressure on faculties.

Major decisions to reduce face-to-face contact teaching at Deakin University have been made with a complete lack of consultation. The Faculty of Business and Law recently decided to halve the number of tutorials in optional Commerce subjects. In a revealing example of University decision-making, students found that despite all of the statements in University policy on student consultation, in particular the Student Charter negotiated at great length during 1998-99, there was no consultation and senior Faculty personnel found it difficult to explain exactly who had made this decision. There was no evidence that any attempt had been made to consider the educational implications of this change, to investigate pedagogy, despite University and Faculty policy statements that educational research would guide educational decision-making. After much effort students discovered that the ‘Faculty Executive’, a body whose name, structure or powers are not mentioned in any published University legislation and regulations, had made the decision. Faculty representatives argued that the reduction in the number of tutorials was congruent with the University’s objectives of internationalisation, as updated on-line course materials, could be used by off-campus students located outside Australia. As a result he decision was a business one rather than an academic one and could be validly made by the ‘Faculty Executive’ rather than the Faculty Board, which includes student representatives, and is responsible by University legislation for all ‘academic matters’. In defense of the decision representatives of the Business & Law Faculty also argued that they were equalising the position of on and off-campus students, despite the fact that student progress rates are lower for off-campus students. The faculty of Health & Behavioural Sciences, traditionally regarded as more student-friendly, has also substantially reduced contact hours for some students. This decision evoked an unprecedented level of opposition among students and over 1800 students signed a petition in opposition to these changes. 

This reduction in academic services for students has been combined with a progressive growth in University financial impositions on students. An increasing portion of student amenities fees has been applied to purely academic activities. Students have been required to access an increasing portion of course materials via the Web and incur heavy printing costs. 

Increasingly on-line learning has become a fad pursued by Deakin as an end in itself. Universities are not immune from the ‘dot.com’ frenzy that saw for instance Yahoo valued by the market at 50% greater than General Motors despite Yahoo having sales about one three hundredth of General Motors. What the recent ‘dot.com’ crash should remind policy makers is that the ‘new’ vs. ‘old’ economy division was fundamentally misleading and this finding is equally applicable to universities. Universities should use new technology to do what they have always done better. The uncritical pursuit of the objective of on-line learning actually contradicts the objective of linking teaching and research.  Staff are kept away from teaching and research to update on-line materials. On-line options are pursued despite evidence from surveys of employers that the area in which they are most dissatisfied with university graduates are communication skills and team work abilities, precisely those generic skills fostered by student participation in tutorials. Indeed employers are generally pleased with students’ computer skills and some feel that students seek to substitute computer skills for personal skills. The University’s preoccupation with forcing students into on-line learning is accompanied by a failure to address the IT skill deficient of many lifelong learners, such as practicing nurses seeking upgraded qualifications. 

The shift towards on-line learning poses serious equity questions, as it requires students to have computer access. In theory students could escape the need to purchase computers by use of on-campus facilities. But students find the amount and availability of computer facilities inadequate, particularly at a time when many more are working longer hours.  The Faculty of Arts has resolved that mandatory private access to a computer and the Internet from 2003, although it has called for investigation of the equity consequences. The requirement to have a computer will have significant impacts on low-income students, and particularly indigenous students, of whom Deakin has a high portion. The University’s Institute of Koorie Education has opposed these requirements. It will also impact heavily on rural and regional students who are less likely to have computer access and modem or developed IT skills. 

The progressive decentralisation of university funding has the impact of reducing the status within the University of those sections that do not ‘earn’ outside income. This dynamic makes little sense given the extent to which ‘profitable’ (actually those sections that run at less of a loss) sections are underpinned by those who do not receive outside income. The process has paralleled the decline of public infrastructure expenditure. The difficulties of the Deakin University library system illustrate this process.

Since the formation of the new Deakin there has been a substantial rationalization and restructuring of Deakin libraries. Across a multi-campus institution the rationalization of library holdings has meant a greater reliance on inter-library loans, and successive rounds of serial subscription cancellations have promoted the need for this. Funding constraints have forced limitations on interlibrary loans to a point where the Library is concerned that the ability of the Library to support research activities is under threat. The Library has felt that its essential status as part of the research infrastructure has not been acknowledged. The impact of funding constraints is heightened by the rising cost of books and serials, even before the recent decline in the value of the Australian dollar, their cost was rising faster than inflation. Deakin is in danger of being forced into the lower tier of a two-tier system, relying on on-line learning and with inadequate resources to develop its research and on-campus teaching.

(b) the effect of increasing reliance on private funding and market behaviour on the sector’s ability to met Australia’s education, training and research needs

The option pursued by universities to fill the gap left by the decline of public funding has been the turn towards the private sector, and as we have seen above this has had substantial impact on the balance of power within universities. In the long-run, and that long-run may be approaching sooner than university managers realise, the potential of ‘corporate education’ to resolve universities’ financial dilemmas is extremely limited, even though Deakin, like many Universities regards it as a pot of gold.

Deakin has been a leader in the pursuit of corporate income. This has taken the form of the wholesale retail of educational services by Deakin, or its commercial arm Deakin Australia (recently renamed Deakin Prime), to employers or professional associations. These bodies then make these courses available to their members or employees. Initially these were University level courses but Deakin Australia has since moved into the provision of Vocational Education & Training qualifications. The most famous package has been the ‘Coles Institute’, effectively a name for the Coles-Myer account with Deakin Australia. The Vice-Chancellor describes the University’s role in the process of corporate education as follows: 

‘The main feature of these activities is the tailoring of course curricula to meet the requirements of the client bodies while ensuring that the University is able to control and guarantee quality.’ 

Deakin Australia has not been the profitable bonanza it promised to be. In 1997 Deakin Australia was predicted to make a profit rate of 7% in 2000, instead it made 3%. There are grounds to doubt that the prediction of a 7% profit rate in 2003 will be realised. Doubts about the future of Deakin Australia may be behind the University’s decision to undertake a review of the organisation. Deakin Australia has been highly successful in the professional association market but his market is largely saturated, and fulfillment of financial goals will require expanding beyond this. It is inconsistent that the University places such hope in its ability to turn its monopoly over accreditation to financial gain when the Vice-Chancellor argued elsewhere that universities are losing their monopoly over the accreditation of knowledge. A charitable explanation for the University’s persistence with Deakin Australia is that it hopes that Deakin Australia’s high profile will bring extra money to the Faculties by making the name of Deakin known in the corporate and professional worlds.  If this is the case than this objective should at least be clearly specified and evaluated against clear criteria. Deakin Australia does refund the University for the use of tangible University resources, but these costs are less important than the time and intellectual energy that senior University administrators apply to Deakin Australia’s operations. 

Deakin has been more cautious in recent years in joint ventures than other universities. The Committee will no doubt be advised of many Universities where this has not been the case. But Deakin’s cautious approach has brought out the fundamental problem of corporate education that will appear even in the absence of wrongdoing or incompetence. If the University is to enter in corporate partnerships it is placed under pressure to give its approval to non-academic ventures. The fact that the head of Deakin Australia is on the University executive demonstrates that Deakin Australia is not merely an optional venture but central to University policy.

Some examples may be extracted from recent University public decision-making. Reforms to accreditation processes seek to fast track course approvals and Faculty Boards seek to facilitate procedures where the Vice-Chancellor identifies matters as ones of ‘major priority’. Faculties are advised by external reviews that a priority must be closer ties with Deakin Australia. The lines of accountability become even more weakened when Deakin Australia outsourced its provision of courses. At the same time Faculties incur substantial costs in the development of fee-paying options such as professional Doctorates, which have notably high attrition rates. The rights of Deakin Australia students to academic support and representation remain notably unclear and Deakin Australia students who have not realised that they are not actually Deakin University students and not student association members have approached student associations.

It is not in the interests of potential corporate partners to offer their employees broadly based qualifications that they could employ in the service of other employers. In the terms of economic analysis training generates externalities that befit the community more than the commissioning employer. In an effort to respond to, and attract the interest of individual corporations Deakin Australia provides training that is tailored to the particular firm, such as the CSR Bachelor of Technology Management. Here Deakin is in danger of follows the same pattern of narrow firm-specific training particularly evident in the ‘New Apprentices’ program but which had emerged earlier with the shift to ‘user-choice’ in the VET sector. The danger of this shift in training policy was identified in the late 1980s by analysts such as John Buchanan and there is a real danger higher education will go the same way. There is little consideration as to whether or not, at a time when national policymakers stress the virtues of flexibility and mobility on the part of the workforce, that these objectives are promoted by tailored courses. Since the 1980s federal education policy has laboured under a fundamental misapprehension of employer motivations. It may well the case, as the 1988 White paper on higher education argued, that employers value workers with a ‘broad educational foundation and with well-developed conceptual, analytical and communication skills’, but it does not follow from this that individual employers will voluntarily contribute financial support to this objective, when they know that it is precisely those workers with broad skills who are more likely to leave their employment. Even on the most narrowly economic analysis investment by firms is research, development and training is likely to fall well below the socially optimum level.

Faculties feel obliged to co-operate in the accreditation of courses and qualifications favoured by Deakin Australia. For example: Deakin Australia undertook negotiations with the ANZ to conduct in-house training. At no stage was the School of Finance, who has the expert knowledge on which the University would base accreditation, invited to participate. When the Professor of Finance did review ANZ training programs he judged them as intermediate between first-year University level and pre-university levels. The Accreditation Committee accredited the courses as providing credits. A certificate in forensic psychology was approved despite not meeting the requirement of College of Forensic Psychologists, in the expectation that the College would accept it under special circumstances.

Deakin Australia has become Deakin University’s vehicle for entry into the VET market. The University here employs its self-accrediting status to accredit VET courses, although concern has been expressed within the University about the quality of some of these courses, and in particular failure to refer to any reading beyond textbooks, despite these concerns the Accreditation Committee resolved in one case that ‘the consequent deprivation of access to wider thought was not considered, of itself, to prevent accreditation’. 

The subordination of University priorities to those of its corporate partners is also apparent in research. A recent example that came to the attention of DUSA and its predecessor organisations was that of a student who received a Deakin University postgraduate award to work on industry-funded research project at Deakin. Under University policy and the terms of the Award he was entitled to take a six-month intermission and did so. When he sought to return the project leader advised him that there was no place on the project. The student complained to the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research) that as an enrolled student he was entitled to place on the project. The project leader advised the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research) that he would not take the student back as he needed to assure the private sponsors of the research that students would not take intermissions. The matter went to an ad hoc university committee who agreed that the student had acted entirely within his rights under the scholarship. Despite this the project leader, although he was a full-time academic, refused to take the student back, on the grounds that the project was externally funded and refuse to release to the student material that the student had worked on. This example reveals clearly that contrary to the argument of the federal government external funding does not empower the University rather it ensures the subordination of the University to the priorities of external partners. 

At the level of HECS-paying undergraduate courses Deakin has traded on school leaver concerns about employability by promoted badged courses, rather than generic Arts or Sciences courses. External reviews have on occasion expressed doubt about this technique, as creating courses that are too narrow in focus and not supporting a range of career outcomes. Badged courses have been approved despite unenthusiastic responses from external reviews.

At the same time that the University claims a devotion to hard headed business rationality it has pursued doggedly the notably unsubstantial goal of ‘prestige’, identified as a key to attracting student numbers.   Marketing has become an end in itself, and the Director of Marketing sits on the University executive, but the Chair of Academic Board does not. One example of the University’s preoccupation with prestige has been the substantial, resources applied to Deakin’s pursuit of the ‘University of the Year’ award. Deakin’s two awards have been employed in marketing the University to prospective undergraduates, despite the fact that its varying criteria bear little relation to undergraduate teaching. It is unfortunately symptomatic of the priorities forced on universities by government policy that a Vice-chancellor’s report to University council last year should list as the first item the activities of a team working on the University of the Year submission, under the heading of ‘Teaching and Learning’. It is revealing that Deakin is apparently not preparing an official submission to this Senate inquiry but it will be doing so to the University of the Year competition. 

(d) the equality of opportunity to participate in higher education

A sign of the decline of sectors other than the core business one is the growing lack of attention to equity within the university, in part Deakin’s performance here reflects the disincentive effect of progressively higher levels of fees but particular trends suggest the consequence of a decline in an equity focus. Deakin has lost ground in many areas since 1995. The percentage of women enrolled in Engineering has fallen from 15.6% in 1995 to 10.5% in 2000. Due to financial constraints the Faculty of Science & Technology was unable to continue funding a staff position dedicated to the improvement of female participation. It is worth noting that patterns of participation within Faculties have substantial impact on the quality of their graduates. Employers surveyed in 1998 were concerned about the poor communication skills of male engineering graduates, compared to their female colleagues. Deakin does well in recruiting isolated students but it is significant that their retention rate is lower than other students and so is their success rate, and this has not improved since 1995. The University has lost ground substantially in its enrolment of Non-English Speaking Background students, which has fallen from 3.5% in 1995 to 1.7% in 2000.

(f) the capacity of public universities to contribute to economic growth

The impact of a narrow profit centered approach on Deakin’s operations has been apparent in its declining significance as a regional University. This should be a key aspect of the commitment to ‘corporate citizenship’ that Deakin claims. Unfortunately at the level of daily decision-making the struggle for financial survival necessarily marginalises broader obligations. Compared to their city equivalents rural and regional school leavers are substantially less likely to go onto University after completing secondary education, and this is despite the fact that the gap between city and country in secondary participation has drastically diminished.

The southwestern region of Victoria can only have been adversely affected by the near halving of off-campus student numbers on-campus at Warrnambool since 1990. It is precisely such a withdrawal of services that risk plunging regions into a cycle of decline with severe social costs that are never accounted for the agencies that make those decisions. Polarisation by educational opportunities has become a key component of regional inequality in Australia. Economic change poses opportunities as well as threats for Australia’s regions, but the ability of regions to exploit these opportunities is largely dependent on the skills, talents and enthusiasm of their citizens.

On one level Deakin values its regional campuses and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity with which they are uttered. The problem is that faculties pursuing short-term financial gain, and the objective of maximising prestige by increasing tertiary entry scores will be driven to place their emphasis on Melbourne. A recent external review of the Faculty of Science & Technology encapsulated these tensions. It posed a conflict between the University’s social obligations to provide academic opportunities on regional campuses, but then called on the Faculty to pursue with more energy the pursuit of external funds and advised that past efforts to maintain load at regional campuses has led to lost opportunities in Melbourne where there more opportunities to recruit students. There can be little doubt that the incentive of pursuing student numbers in Melbourne and the prestige associated with this will win out over Warrnambool. 

Objectives such as the restoration of teacher education at Warrnambool, for which there has been persistent local demand, and recommended by an external review, remain in the balance. DETYA itself admits that in regional areas there is a strong relationship between university proximity and participation. University leaders admit there is a case for duplication of courses between Deakin campuses given the low level of student mobility, but this duplication is identified as wasteful. One solution proposed is the increased use of technology to enable cross campus teaching. There can be little doubt that if staff are to be located at one campus they are likely to go to Burwood. The result will be, and there is already anecdotal evidence of this, a decline in the availability of staff for face-to-face contact at regional campuses. 

The impact on Warrnambool of the decline of the Deakin Warrnambool campus means more than just the withdrawal of local demand for goods and services form students and staff. Recent work on regional economic development has recognised that among the most important resources of a region are leaders who can rally support for change, and that Universities are ideally suited to provide such leaders.  Given the growing volatility of investment flows regional economic strength is best developed through growing local firms rather than attracting outside investment. Deakin has encouraged the study of regional development issues at in southwestern Victoria through a centre for Regional Development, but this seems to have lapsed into inactivity, and its WebPages have not been updated since 1998. If regional school leavers see a local University that has withdrawn from their local community this perception is likely to reinforce the belief, strong among many regional and rural teenagers, particularly from lower socio-economic groups, that university is irrelevant to them.

Despite University concern about higher attrition rates among Warrnambool students, many more of whom come from lower socio-economic backgrounds and families lacking a history of tertiary study, the University has ceased support for the highly successful peer tutoring program at the Warrnambool campus, run co-operatively with the local student association, and using students which has proceed an 80% pass rate among those participating.

From 1995 to 1999 there was a steady decline in undergraduate particularly on campus, enrolments at Warrnambool, which was reversed in 2000. The reversal of this trend in 2000 was hailed by University administration as evidence that Warrnambool was now regarded as higher quality. These hopeful signs at Warrnambool must be seen against the backdrop of the fact that renewed pressure on faculties to meet targets for fee income to pay for the EBA. The most recent Arts Faculty Strategic Plan foreshadows staff reductions at Warrnambool, even though an earlier strategic plan had wanted to improve the profile of Arts at Warrnambool. Once again we see how long run agendas are sacrifice to short term financial survival. 

Conclusion

As we have argued above Deakin University has a considerable record of achievement. In future years the Deakin University Student Associations looks forward to co-operation with University leaders to improve the quality of life for all Deakin students. But what we require from the governments that we elect is an acknowledgment, in deeds and not just words, that Universities are ultimately no more than their members and that their priorities must be the creation of an informed and ethical citizenry.