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		Managing Higher Education Diversity in a Climate of Public Sector Reform
		98/5 V. Lynn Meek and Fiona Q. Wood University of New England May 1998
		Evaluations and Investigations Program Higher Education Division Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs

©Commonwealth of Australia 1998

ISBN 0 642 23761 1

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This report is funded under the Evaluation and Investigations Programme of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.

Executive Summary

The various issues and debates regarding diversity in higher education are discussed in the context of the shift from elite to mass higher education which has occurred in all industrialised countries. One of the major themes in this transition is the response of higher education institutions and systems to what has been termed as the new public sector policy environment of self-regulation and market competition. Built into the new policy context is the assumption that market forces are a far better means for achieving functional differentiation of institutional types, programs and activities than centralised government control and regulation. The report examines this assumption from several perspectives.

In Part 2 of the report leading commentators on Australian higher education address the following broad questions.

• To what extent can the sector be seen to be achieving the sort of diversity required by a mass system of higher education?
  
• What policies and mechanisms are best suited to achieving this diversity?
  
• What are the major obstacles/inhibitors of diversity?

In Chapter 3 entitled: ‘The Australian Higher Education System—Diversity: Sought or Neglected?’ Professor Jillian Maling and Bruce Keepes discuss how diversity was achieved within the former binary system of higher education. In Chapter 4, Professor Peter Karmel examines the relationship between funding mechanisms, institutional autonomy and diversity. Past and present federal government policies on higher education funding are discussed, and alternative models and their consequences for diversity considered.

Apart from government policy and regulations, the legislative environment in which higher education operates has a profound influence on the sector’s operations. In Chapter 5, Dr Russell Blackford investigates the implications of industrial relations legislation for diversity within the sector. The question of why enterprise bargaining (and other industrial regulation initiatives) has yet to achieve the degree of staffing flexibility at the institutional level as envisaged in the 1988 White Paper is comprehensively examined. In Chapter 6, Dr Simon Marginson considers the effects of market forces and competition reform on the potential for differentiation, diversity and innovation in the Australian higher education system. The focus of the chapter is on systemic diversity. According to Dr Marginson, the market in Australian higher education is ‘less contested and contestable than the Government hopes’ and market competition has been a pressure for conservatism more than for a freeing up of the system.

Part 3 of the report presents the empirical data gathered in the course of the study. In Chapter 8, programmatic, systemic, structural and constitutional diversity are explored. Using the 1990 and 1996 annual institutional statistical returns provided to the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs as a base, diversity is investigated in terms of change which may be detected over this period. The unit of analysis is the commencing student enrolment. A profile is presented in terms of both a broad overview of the system and individual institutional characteristics.

At the most basic level, Chapter 8 indicates change in the system through the substantial increase in commencing student enrolments between 1990 and 1996. During this period, the numbers of commencing student enrolments in the Unified National System increased by nearly 60 000, or 30 per cent. Changes in broad fields of study range from an 86 per cent increase in Law and Legal Studies, to a 3 per cent decrease in Education. Together the broad fields of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Business, Administration and Economics account for more than half of the increase.

In terms of fields of study, institutions are most differentiated by variations in the proportions of students in Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, and Veterinary Science; and somewhat less differentiated by differing profiles in Architecture and Building, Engineering and Surveying, and Law and Legal Studies. In contrast, all institutions have a substantial profile in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Business, Administration and Economics, and Science; and most institutions engage in Education and Health.

An increase in number of commencing student enrolment was established for all course categories and modes of study. However, when the analysis shifts from numerical to percentage distribution, the following changes are evident:

• a shift from internal to external mode of study;
  
• increases in second degree/postgraduate enrolments by both external and internal mode of study;
  
• an increase in research higher degree enrolments; and
  
• a decline in the percentage share of internal first degree enrolments.

Substantial increases are also evident in the proportion of domestic postgraduate enrolments that are fee-paying. The sector is clearly responding to the opportunities for growth in this area. Similarly there has been an overall trend to increase enrolments of fee paying international students. Although for internal students in this category it is clear that Business, Administration and Economics, and Engineering and Surveying offer particular opportunities for growth.

During the period under observation, access by Indigenous Australians increased significantly as did access by persons of non-English speaking background. The number of female commencing enrolments increased by 2 per cent between 1990 and 1996, pushing the proportion of students who are female to well over 50 per cent. However, the spectacular increase in enrolments overall did not provide proportionately more opportunities for persons of low socio-economic status, and rural and isolated students also remain seriously under-represented in 1996.

The profile presented in Chapter 8 is one of the first comprehensive attempts to quantify diversity and system change in Australian higher education. Although limitations regarding some of the data and measures are identified, the methodology developed nonetheless provides a useful model for others concerned to establish statistical indicators for sector diversity.

Using a quite different methodological approach, Chapter 9 investigates how the institutions themselves are responding to the opportunities, challenges and problems in meeting demands for diversity. On the basis of a series of indepth interviews with senior management and academic staff in three universities, this chapter explores institutional management and responses to diversity within the context of the following:

• the external environment (e.g. government policy and funding arrangements, industry and community expectations regarding the sector);
  
• the internal environment (e.g. institutional cultures, structures, history, and processes); and
  
• at the level of the school/faculty/department.

Chapter 10 in Part 4 of the report explores how marketisation and privatisation will effect the degree of diversity within Australian higher education. On the basis of this study it is clear that by and large universities have met the challenge of government to diversify their funding bases and thus to some extent generated for themselves a greater degree of autonomy for their operations. Whether funding diversity has stimulated more educational diversity and opportunity within the sector is open to question.

The report explores the many factors which could be considered to enhance diversity in the Australian higher education sector and those which act as inhibitors. However, it is clear that the university may not be able to maintain its monopoly as a knowledge producer as post-industrial society continues to develop. In particular, as the knowledge society continues to develop, market relations based on knowledge production increasingly permeate all aspects and institutions of society, and the university is faced with a growing number of competitors in both research and training. What is at question is the continuing importance and centrality of the university as knowledge is increasingly brought within market and political exchanges.

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