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Transcript
Transcript of the Launch of the Carrick Institute for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Parliament House
Wednesday 11 August 2004
Brendan Nelson:
Today is an extremely important day in the life, not only of higher education, but indeed of the future of Australia itself. Our economic and social development is going to, largely, be driven in this century by what happens in Australian universities. In 1975, when Sir John Carrick was appointed as Australia’s Minister for Education, there were 300,000 Australians in Australian universities. Today the sector is almost three times that size. The world in which we are living is quite different from the one of 1975 and indeed the latter part of the last century. We face quite different challenges and certainly see different horizons and we are living in a world where we have moved, at least in our country, as they are in other similar countries, to much broader access to higher education. A revolution in telecommunications which, amongst many other things, has changed the nature of the delivery of teaching and also of the way in which students learn. The impact of globalisation, not just economic but also cultural, is changing, in some ways, the role of Australian universities and the expectations that have been placed upon them, and increasingly all of us, irrespective of our age, realise that we are going to have to continue to learn throughout life.
There are many things that Australians expect of Australian universities, but if I was to ask the average Australian “well what do you think universities should be doing?”, they basically expect them to be teaching their children. I think Adam Smith, in 1776, made the observation in the Wealth of Nations that the discipline of colleges and universities is contrived, not for the benefit of students but for the comfort and ease and interest of its masters. And what we have sought to do and what John Hay, in particular is advocating us to do through the reforms of higher education, was to move students increasingly toward the centre of the higher education experience and for the focus not only to be on research and scholarship but also increasingly on learning and teaching. As John said in his introductory remarks, which is already considered to be of a very high standard internationally, but for us to consider what can we do to further elevate the status and standard of teaching in Australian universities.
As I go through, on a day to day basis, not only driving the case for reform but indeed what we have already done, I say to Australian parents that the single most important thing that they must understand that their children will need from Australian universities and indeed subsequent generations, is that they, unlike my generation and those who came before us, are much more likely to be wanting to work in other parts of the world. Their employability in North America and in Europe and indeed Asia, will be determined entirely by the reputation enjoyed by the institution that confers the qualification upon them. And it’s essential that whilst we have a high standard of university education in Australia that we’re continually driving higher standards and recognise that the only benchmarks, the only benchmarks against which we’re going to be measured, are international ones. But those of you who come from different universities throughout Australia know that, yes you are competing with one another, but increasingly you are competing with the rest of the world.
And in order to make that competition effective on behalf of Australian institutions it was essential for us to do two things – to change the way in which Australian universities are regulated and administered and secondly to get more money into the sector and a lot more of it in the long term. And in the process of the reform and what we’re doing here today with the Carrick Institute, is to make sure that at the heart of it is the highest quality of teaching and learning. What the Institute will do is a number of things, and as John’s alluded to – there’s $400,000 being invested, this year, in seeing that the Institute is established. I can advise you that it will be in Melbourne. I’ll also be putting in $1 million next year for the Institute to develop its programme of activities and then $22 million a year will be provided to the Institute on a recurrent basis. And what it will be doing is making sure that we have performance benchmarks, which are set in terms of quality teaching and learning throughout Australian higher education, to drive as we need to in schooling, national consistency, in academic standards, in supporting peer review.
We want the Institute to manage competitive grants based programmes to further help us understand and raise the standard of teaching in Australian universities, and we also want to make sure that everything that happens with the Institute is about co-ordinating educational programmes with other universities and indeed with other parts of the secondary education sector. The Institution will also be playing a role in seeing that we have exchanges of internationally acclaimed experts in the fields of teaching, to help us better understand how it is done in other countries and how we can further improve on our already high standards.
As part of the reforms also, we’re moving now to 250 annual awards for excellence in university teaching. There will be 210 awards worth $10,000 each. There’ll be 40 awards worth $25,000 each and the Prime Minister’s award for outstanding achievement in university teaching will be worth $50,000 and those awards will also be administered and run by the Carrick Institute.
It’s also extremely important, when we look at what’s passing for the debate of higher education, to realise that in terms of facing the future it is important that we have choice, that we don’t exclude Australians from what is the most rapidly growing part of our services sector in Australia and indeed internationally, and that is education. And we need to not ever accept that the only good education is that which is publicly funded and that which occurs only in public institutions. It’s extremely important that all Australians have choice and choice that they can afford and wherever education is provided, under the name of a university or higher education provider in Australia, it should be of the very highest quality.
Sir John Carrick has made an enormous contribution to our country. He is an economics graduate from Sydney University, he also served this country in war and for a period of time suffered as a prisoner of war. He was, as many of you would know, for a long time an active member and official of the Liberal Party of Australia, but I can assure you that’s not why he’s here today. He said in 1967, of liberals at least, he said that true liberals were committed to the welfare of the individual, the creation of the opportunities for the preservation of human dignity and for the development of human potential. What the Carrick Institute is about is the last and that is the development of human potential. Our vision is that every person in this country should be able to find and achieve their own potential, whatever that is.
Sir John became Australia’s Minister for Education after the election of the Fraser Government in 1975. He did many things, but one of them was the establishment of the National Tertiary Education Commission, to play for the first time, a serious role in co-ordinating the higher education sector throughout Australia and at arm’s length from Government, for which I know many of you here would have great sympathy and longing. He also recognised, I think as the first Minister to really recognise the importance of co-ordinating the post secondary education sector generally and the Commission played an important role in starting that very important process. Sir John, since leaving Parliament at least, has also played a significant role in early childhood education, being on the Advisory Council for the Early Childhood Institute for Education at Macquarie University. He’s also Chairman of the University of New South Wales Gifted Education Institute for Research, he was also overseeing the very important process, in the early 90’s, in school education in New South Wales; he has an Honorary Doctorate from two universities, Macquarie and Sydney; he also, as you know is knighted for his service to his country and to the Parliament; he’s a Centenary Fellow and the other thing I should say to you is that of all of the people that I have met in my adult life there are few that I consider more noble and decent, nor intelligent nor committed to the cause of education than Sir John Carrick and his wife.
But as John Hay was saying, that it’s sometime since Sir John has been involved in politics, well in a formal sense that is so. The Prime Minister will be arriving to mix with us shortly after the official events, but it’s my honour to introduce Sir John. You should also know that when I advised the Prime Minister that Sir John had agreed to have the Institute, with great reluctance I must say, to have the Institute named in his honour the Prime Minister said “are you sure?” And I said, “yes I am Prime Minister.” He said “he has never allowed his name to be used in relation to anything before” and I said “well he certainly wasn’t enthusiastic about this, but he felt that if it was involved with improving the quality of teaching and of education then it was something, with reluctance, he would be prepared to do. So Sir John, thank you and welcome.
Sir John Carrick:
Minister, Professor Hay, Professor Johnson, ladies and gentlemen. I thank the Minister for his overly generous and overly kind words, but I have to confess even despite all my recidivist past and particularly in this atmosphere here in the Senate today, that I remain bemused and if a former politician can say this, even chastened, even chastened, and that’s an awful confession.
I know fully very well, having journeyed for decades amongst excellent educators in this country, I know that there are many of them, any one of which whom with more merit could stand here today, could stand here today and I’ve grown with them, I’ve learnt from them, they’ve corrected my mistakes. I’ve been happy to have AVCC’s tell me when I was wrong, and they do that, not always with the greatest of gentleness, but nevertheless with a smile. I think, therefore, if I may, can we regard this title rather as a body corporate or a staffer title than a truly torrens one, because I think you’ve all helped in that.
Now if, indeed I’m a little chastened on that, I have no reservations at all about this new and very very exciting Institute. I can’t think of an undertaking in government or in education which is more at the core and the conscience of education, because it does something that is very real. We get mixed up between mechanisms, means and ends, we think that numbers or awards or graduations are important. The truth is that people are the goal, the teacher, the student, the personal development of each individual according to their potential ability. And that’s the goal that you’re doing there. The pursuit of excellence that you are now enthused for is not simply excellence in getting scores or marks or anything else, it is to be able to develop the potential of people and there is no greater secular goal. But then I think it goes further than that, oh 20, 30 years ago, I thought, in this place, that one of my duties, my main duty, was to help in bringing about a material wellbeing for people across the spectrum and I thought that that would make society so much more happy and content. I now know that that’s not necessarily so, that there’s a missing factor in this.
Now I’ve seen and heard and felt and smelt in the last 15, 20 years, what I call a new dissatisfaction and a new hunger, and I think you people are charged with understanding this. I call it the hunger of the spirit. There is something beyond material satisfaction that people are seeking, in terms of seeking the purpose of meaning, of understanding a purpose, indeed of values, not just the problem of the schools and which school you should go to, it goes right across to every age group and everybody else. The real challenge for the future, if it’s to be the peace of the world, if it’s to be walking together in diverse ways in this country, it is that we should be able to walk together, side by side, in co-partnership, in a warm atmosphere of a university and to reach out with our learning, for lifelong learning, for the great adventure of learning, for an attempt to understand people.
In other words what we’re really doing is getting back to those ivy clad monasteries of old where the purpose of learning was the purpose of understanding one’s self and the world around you. I couldn’t be more excited or privileged to be part of that adventure. I’ve benefited immensely from you all over the years. I thank you for it and it’s very very kind of you to have me amongst you.
Journalist:
Dr Nelson, can you tell us a little bit more about this Institute?
Brendan Nelson:
Well as part of the $2.6 billion reforms to Australian universities, one of the priorities is to further lift the quality of teaching in Australian universities. We want to make sure that students are at the very centre of what happens in universities and that the focus of teaching is on students and the quality that they receive. We’re investing $22 million a year in the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Australian Higher Education. What it will do is make sure that we have nationally consistent high standards of teaching in Australian universities, to distribute not only grants in terms of researching the best way to actually teach students, and the best way to deliver programmes, but also awards for excellence in Australian higher education.
Journalist:
But don’t existing universities already provide these sorts of services? Why does there need to be a specific institute for teaching?
Brendan Nelson:
We want to make sure that we have national standards that are set. We have high quality teaching in every university in Australia, that we formalise and financially support peer review by academics of the standard of their own teaching and constantly drive better ways of finding how to teach students in the best possible way. It’s important we have a national focus, with national benchmarks, high standards throughout Australia and that wherever you are educated in any Australian university that you know that there’s a national institute which is overseeing the highest quality possible. Increasingly our universities are competing with the rest of the world and for students who go to Australian universities who will want to work in other countries, they’ll find, when they turn up in North America or Europe, the first thing that the employer will be looking at, which university did you go to, what’s the quality of teaching like there. And this Institute is an investment in our future and the future employment of Australian graduates.
Journalist:
Dr Nelson, you mentioned the importance of those benchmarks. Should this Institute have the ability to enforce those benchmarks or penalise universities or publicly shame them if they don’t meet them?
Dr Nelson:
Well firstly, I think the Institute itself needs to decide whether it is going to publish the benchmarks and the academic profession itself needs to make decisions about whether it will be disclosing achievement or otherwise of national benchmarks. But I think increasingly what we want to do in terms of higher education reform is make sure that we fund universities on the basis of performance. We want the quality of teaching in Australian universities to be judged by students and for student’s assessment of the quality of teaching itself to be published.
But I think that the everyday Australian taxpayer can have increased confidence as a result of the Government’s reforms that we’re going to have even higher quality in Australian universities. And we’ve got experts in teaching, not just in universities, but also from the school and broader education sectors, involved in formalising the quality of teaching. We’re in a situation today where only a quarter of the academics teaching our kids in Australian universities have had any formal training to be teachers. That you are an outstanding researcher doesn’t, of itself, mean that you’re going to be a terrific teacher. So it’s all about standards, about giving the power to set and enforce those standards to academics themselves and driving national consistency and putting $22 million a year of taxpayers hard earned money behind it.
Journalist:
Should universities eventually be ranked as to their teaching performance?
Brendan Nelson:
I think students themselves in the future, where there will be much more information available to them about the performance of universities, they will make decisions themselves about the quality of education they’re going to receive, how much the student will pay back through the tax system from HECS once they go to a particular university, and what their likelihood is of getting a job once they’ve attended a particular university. I mean, as with schools, in universities we’ll want to make sure we have national standards, high quality, and we want information available to the public and we want rational decision making and importantly performance standards have to be set, only by academics themselves, and in that sense we’re supporting them with $22 million a year.
Thanks very much.
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