From:	Bruce [bruce@highway1.com.au]
Sent:	Monday, 2 April 2001 8:04 AM
To:	eet.sen@aph.gov.au
Subject:	The Capacity of Public Universities to Meet Australia's Higher Education Meeds
THE CAPACITY OF PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES  TO MEET AUSTRALIA'S HIGHER EDUCATION
NEEDS		

One disappointment in the development of Australian Universities emerged
when the Colleges of Advanced Education became Universities. They were
found to be operating much in the mould of existing universities. 	

	Australia continues to neglect middle level training: graduates from the
old British technology institutions, awarding Higher National Certificates,  
can be found in Australian institutions. Many will remember the Sydney
Technical College emerging first as a University of Technology, later to
become the University of NSW.

	There is a sameness in Australian Universities and it is the moment to ask
why there is so little
diversity in their practice.

	Sir George Currie chaired a Committee to prepare a report on a future
University in Papua and New Guinea.
The Cuurrie Commission Report addressed the problem of recruiting students
from an educational environment unlike that of Australia. They suggested
the model at Keele University in the U.K. which offered a four year
Bachelor's degree which devoted the first year, a foundation year, to
introduce students to study, the use of libraries, research and preparing
reports, taking notes, participating in seminars and all the aspects of
scholarship. Sir George knew Australian Universities
and I was not surprised to detect in the plans for Murdoch University that
some of his reflections on Western Australian Universities had found a
place at the Murdoch University Planning Board.

	Murdoch University had grasped the nettle: a foundation first year for new
students,Interdisciplinary Schools of Study, not Departments, Boards of
Study for Part 1, Part II and Post-Graduate Studies.   
	 
	Murdoch University recruited foundation staff world-wide and some with
affiliations to Australian Universities were uneasey on arrival. At the end
of the
first year in 1975 Henry Schoenheimer reviewed the
situation in the National Times under the heading "Go West for Liberated
Learning Before it is Too Late." That
created outrage in some quarters of the University but twenty five years
later much has survived, especially in the area of staff-student relations.
The Boards of Study gave young staff an opportunity to influence the
development of the new University but the Boards were abolished after five
years when alternative decision making committees had crept into place over
those years.

	In more recent times the RMIT University seems to have established a
special identity but diversity is not
an attribute of the Australian University system. 

	The question is why the lack diversity? Peer group pressure is evident in
the system. The turmoil in Universities in the late 1960's tended to worry
senior staff in the 1970's, the rapid expansion of Australian Universities
in more recent times, their shrinking budgets and the attempts to
corporatise their decision making have led to a palpable polarisation
between the administration and the academic staff in Australian
Universities. The old collegiate model is in retreat; it exists in small
cells but is irrelevant to the administration.

THE AUSTRALIAN VICE CHANCELLORS COMMITTEE

This Committee meets regularly and has a supportive executive but it would
be useful to investigate to what extent its deliberations limit diversity
in their universities. 

In recent times they have encouraged attempts at objective evaluations of
teaching and research and they have been well managed. In the evaluation of
Honours Degrees in the nineteen Universities at that time, teams of
academics in the discipline area visited each University to discuss
criteria being used in the assessment of students. The result was that
where it was not already practised, assessors should provide written
reports to present to the assessment committee.   

In the area of advice to individual Vice Chancellors the AVCC has been less
successful.

Since 1994 more than five members of academic staff have been dismissed and
reinstated after appeal, generally the appeals have been successful because
of procedural unfairness on the part of the University. In one case a
member of staff faced fifteen allegations but because of duplication there
were essentially eight allegations. Before the delivery of the allegations,
the AVCC executive was consulted but failed to advise the Vice Chancellor
to edit the allegations. 

When presented to an experienced Industrial Court Judge he queried the
quantity and substance of the allegations, observed that the University was
using public monies for the case and he was reluctant to allow them to
waste the Court's time as well. Senior Counsel for the appellant visited
the V.C. to advise him of the situation but the V.C. is reported to have
said that the University had a deeper pocket than the appellant and the
case should continue and it did for three years!

LECTURERS UNDER PRESSURE

	In another case a certain Dean developed the habit of  changing grades
without consulting the course lecturer. Programme Committees, on several
occasions, passed motions that the supervising lecturer must be consulted
before grades are changed but to no avail. This was not a stand-over
technique but a whimsical habit of a Dean. Sworn evidence on that issue is
in the Industrial Court Transcript and can be provided on request.

 B. Mainsbridge,

Formerly Foundation Professor of Physics, University of Papua and New
Guinea 1967-1972 and Foundation Professor of Physics at Murdoch University
1974-1995.