Submission
to the
Review of Higher Education Financing and Policy, under the Chairmanship of Mr. Roderick West,

from the
Association for Christian Higher Education in Australia, Incorporated

Preface.

Introduction.

For the record, it should be noted that ACHEA does not adopt a fundamentalist view of the relationship of the bible to science and scholarship. The attention of the Review Committee is drawn to ACHEA's Statement of Christian Principle Concerning Science and Scholarship, reproduced as an Appendix to this Submission.

Scope.

Format.

Part One: The University: its basic task and contemporary predicament.

Part Two: Some Proposals for Australia's higher educational future.

Part Three: Responses to specific issues and major review themes.

Part Four: Statement of Recommendations and key points.

PART ONE
The University: its basic task and contemporary predicament.

1.2. In Australia, universities have also, historically, been engaged in training for the professions, particularly those of law and medicine. As successive governments have responded to the call for a more highly trained and better qualified work force, this side of post-secondary education has become increasingly prominent in the universities. This trend has been further reinforced by perceptions of globalisation and market competitiveness. One of the consequences of the so-called `reforms' under the Dawkins administration of DEET has been a further blurring of the `training in science' and `training for employment or the professions' distinction that we consider to be necessary to safeguard science and scholarship as the raison d' être of the university, as expressed by ACHEA in its Constitution.

1.3. ACHEA has no objection in principle to the provision of a wide variety of employment and professional training opportunities and facilities. However, ACHEA is opposed to the attrition of the university system in an attempt to accommodate and facilitate the provision of post-secondary employment related training. Repeated attempts to publicly justify universities and their funding by policies which assume that this is their basis and rationale have done little to reassure the universities of their role in scientific research and reflection. The impact of government policy has been to reduce and attenuate in Australian universities those disciplines that are necessary for the work of any university worthy of the name, but for which no immediate commercial application can be found. A further consequence of this policy has been a skewing of institutional and disciplinary goals by a slow but sure transformation of teaching and research in the direction of work and employment related studies to the detriment of the specifically scientific and scholarly task of the university.

1.3.1. Before the time of the so-called `Dawkins reforms' the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Committee (CTEC) was responsible for the oversight of almost all tertiary education: not only the universities, but Institutes of Technology and Colleges of Advanced Education, TAFE, and so forth. Each sought to make a distinctive contribution to tertiary education. Clearly, the idea of special missions, and distinct sectors, was not clearly thought out, but the rhetoric which emerged under Dawkins was of `collapsing the binary divide'. It was strongly implied that the universities, with the focus on their scholarly and research tasks, were `elitist'. The latter was contrasted with the more `democratic' and `down-to-earth' function which was ascribed to the non-university institutions, which was supposed to be in `teaching' as if the one was `lower' than the other. Such abstractions derive from ideology and did not adequately face up to the variety of science and scholarship (universities and aspects of the CAEs), professional training (universities, CAEs and technological institutes), technical training (technological institutes and TAFE). CTEC and the corresponding State bodies supervised transfer of credit between courses, but without the necessary structural insight found itself incapable of managing the border-lines between sectors. The interaction between Technical Institutes, CAEs and Universities was healthy, if at times unwieldy. But without adequate insight into the actual situation as a tri- or even multi-partite system, the re-organisation under the so-called `Dawkins reforms' has served to destroy the educational diversity in tertiary education which CTEC had helped bring into being.

1.3.2. In this situation the federal government now needs to develop greater insight into the peculiar focus of universities and distinguish that from the special tasks of professional and technological training. Only then will federal administrations have sufficient structural insight to guide them when making long-term policy decisions about all higher education sectors. Simply lumping all such higher education under `universities' does not make for a more efficient tertiary education sector.

1.4. As a consequence of these and related changes, and behind a public relations façade, universities in Australia are now subject to serious internal stresses and strains, as what is expected of them repeatedly stands at variance with their fundamental purpose. Arguably, it would have been much better for the federal government, ten or fifteen years ago, to have had the clarity and courage to say that sufficient funds were available to provide for only nine or ten true universities in Australia, and that general policy dictated that the rest needed to be constituted or re-constituted as places for further, vocational, technical and professional education and training.

1.5. We have now inherited a situation in which the task of the university to provide a training in science (in respect of each and every science) has been seriously compromised, even as successive federal governments view the universities as tools in the implementation of government policy designed to serve successive party political and ideological views of what constitutes `the national interest'. Moreover, the need to rein in federal government spending, and the manner in which this has impacted upon the universities in the `unitary system', has further tended to deflect our universities from their proper task.

1.6. In the longer run we are actually impairing our national capacity to think critically and creatively. We are handicapping ourselves for the future. We are doing this because we are training students to be prompt absorbers of information and efficient processors of data, but we are not offering students an adequate concomitant training in thinking analytically and critically.

1.7. ACHEA believes that these problems are a significant factor in the present deplorably low level of morale among academics, scientists and students in our universities. At the same time, many young university students resent being forced down narrowly defined employment-related courses. The best students seek not only employment gaining qualifications: they seek a higher education of the university type. As a result, many feel cheated. Having finally made it to university they are too often confronted with poor teaching, run-down facilities, an ambiguous curriculum derived from the governmentally induced tensions described above, and increasing charges and expenses.

1.8. Moreover, what has been evident in the United Kingdom and Western Europe for some time is now becoming clearer in Australia: possession of qualifications does not in any way guarantee success when seeking employment. The increasing numbers of persons who are highly qualified and unemployed or underemployed can testify to this at their cost. ACHEA urges federal and state governments not to assume that higher/further education and training will alone solve the unemployment (including the youth unemployment) problem. Australia certainly needs a trained work force, but education and qualifications alone cannot resolve what has clearly emerged as a deep structural problem.

1.9. Indeed, it might be said that the increasing disinclination to support (within the present universities) those disciplines that foster critical thinking, such as philosophy and the human sciences, only impairs our national and public capacity to critically address problems such as the gradual emergence of large scale structural unemployment. ACHEA believes that this is another good reason why Australia needs non-state higher educational institutions of the university type, bound to the highest standards of scholarship, but not constrained by specifically governmental, ecclesiastical or business-commercial priorities.

PART TWO
Constructive proposals for Australia's higher educational future.

2.2. An extension of current pre-tertiary educational diversity. ACHEA believes that federal and state governments should view this proposal as an extension of the diversity that already exists, and is in many ways thriving, in the fields of pre-tertiary schooling. In the State of Victoria approximately one quarter of pre-tertiary students are attending non-state schools.

2.3. The provision of choice. Australian students, and those from overseas who wish to study in Australia, should have the opportunity of studying in appropriately accredited non-government funded institutions of post-secondary higher education. This is not an esoteric proposal. Degree granting institutions similar to the type that ACHEA has in view currently operate in the Netherlands, Hungary, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Canada and the USA.

2.4. A recognition of diversity. It should be stressed that ACHEA is not seeking such legislative public legal provision for itself alone. While the standpoint and perspective of ACHEA is that of Protestant and Reformed Christianity, we wish to see an equal higher educational liberty extended to Orthodox and Catholic, Jewish and Islamic, and other such perspectives.

2.5. The issue of funding. The `free' institutions of higher education that ACHEA envisages, while they would of course be subject to the law of the land, would not be subject to state or federal government control or in receipt of any state or federal government funding as of right. Nevertheless, successive governments would need to make their contribution to creating an environment in which such institutions can flourish. In this respect ACHEA makes three specific points:

2.5.1. The federal government, through the provision of relevant taxation and cognate legislation, needs to provide much more encouragement and incentive to Australian parents to save for the future costs of the education of their children. At present a tax exemption is granted in respect of the interest earned on monies saved through friendly societies where the benefits are paid and applied for educational purposes. However, in many cases the tax exemption on fund earnings is insufficient and too distant an incentive to induce many parents to participate in such programmes. There is a need for month by month, or at least annual, tax deductibility relief for often hard-pressed households making monthly savings for the future secondary and tertiary education of their children.

2.5.2. The federal government also needs to provide much more generous tax deductibility concessions in respect of both individual and corporate financial support given to all institutions of higher education and research in Australia. If the federal government believes that it has general and budgetary grounds for further reducing its expenditure in the field of higher education, it will find itself presiding over an exceptionally serious higher educational decline, unless it provides ample and long term encouragement to parents, individuals and corporations in the manner here proposed.

2.5.3. As non-government funded non-state controlled universities emerge they should not be subject to registration or accreditation provisions to which are attached excessive fee structures. Excessive registration or accreditation fees would have the effect of penalising non-governmental initiatives. Such institutions should not be accepted on sufferance, or regarded as sources of revenue, but genuinely encouraged as promoting the educational diversity and cultural richness of the nation.

2.7. Viability. The non-government funded non-state controlled universities here envisaged would not necessarily be on the scale of our present federally funded institutions. ACHEA does not regard size as an adequate gauge or guarantor of higher educational quality and effectiveness. Under the impact of the trends discussed above the contemporary university has been termed the `mega-multiversity'. ACHEA does not regard size as a criterion to decide whether an institution of higher education is a university. Clearly a university is more than a research institute, but the mere size of an institution does not guarantee its status as a genuine university. ACHEA submits that the federal government should not regard the current `mega-multiversity' as the exclusive model for all future university development in Australia. Size should not be confused with purpose or excellence.

2.8. Resources. It is envisaged that the non-government funded non-state controlled universities here advocated would not necessarily require large library stocks and space as built up by the present universities. ACHEA takes note of the potential of new and pending technologies in this field, and believes that they should be used to the best advantage. At the same time, it should be recognised that the present university libraries have been built up through funding ultimately provided by all Australian taxpayers, and that, accordingly, the libraries of non-government funded non-state controlled universities should not be excluded from the inter-loan system or from access to the means of inter-university co-operation and mutual assistance.

2.9. Research. In respect of the non-government funded non-state controlled universities, ACHEA recommends that they determine their own research priorities and programmes, and raise their own funding accordingly. The federal government needs to give effective leadership in developing a much more research conscious culture in Australia generally.

2.10. A Constructive development. ACHEA believes that the encouragement and development of non-government funded and non-state controlled alternatives to the `unitary system' universities would be a stimulus to the present universities without constituting any form of threat to their status or well-being. The present universities would have the opportunity to respond creatively and positively to the greater diversity that would be brought to Australian higher education generally.

PART THREE
Responses to specific issues and major review themes.

3.1.1. ACHEA is of the view that governments should resist viewing the work of universities exclusively in terms of narrowly defined economic benefits. As stated above, governments will be most unwise if they look to post-secondary education as the prime solution to the problem of increasing structural unemployment. The constructive reform of higher education may prove to be a long and complex task.

3.1.2. ACHEA believes that the long term well-being of science, scholarship and higher education in Australia would be best served by freeing the present universities from exclusive or preponderant government control and dependence. However, it should be recognised that in proceeding with such a structural reformation, all of the relevant agencies will stand in need of the diverse insights available from scientists and scholars both within and without the present universities. And here we have in mind science and scholarship unconstrained by ideological determinants, political agendas or business interests.

3.1.3. ACHEA is convinced that such a policy would be economically beneficial in the full sense of the term. It would enrich our national culture and heighten our contribution to higher education globally.

3.2.1. The demand for post-secondary employment related training, as well as for higher education of the university type can be expected to remain strong. However, as Higher Education Contributions (HECS) and other charges increase, without any concomitant rise in average after tax household incomes, the effective demand for higher educational places will tend to decline, even on a demographically adjusted basis, unless corrective action is taken promptly.

3.2.2. ACHEA believes that the level of effective demand will be strongly influenced by federal government fiscal, financial and taxation policies and its willingness to provide genuine long and short term incentives to encourage educational savings, endowment and investment that will provide for the higher educational needs of all Australians, not least those of moderate or lower means. Such educational savings should be viewed in the context of the diverse mosaic of available post-secondary educational options. Although universities should continue to be viewed as central in the midst of this diversity, these savings, with the tax exemption and deductibility that they should enjoy, should be applicable to all lawfully constituted institutions of post-secondary education.

3.3.1. ACHEA stands for accountability at all levels of education. Nothing in this Submission should be interpreted as calling for anything other than a lawful, ordered and constructive reform and diversification of higher education. A non-monopolistic approach to the institution and maintenance of university education will help to challenge those unnecessary and harmful trends towards hierarchic and bureaucratic centralisation which have made DEETYA loom far too large in the day to day work of the present universities. ACHEA submits that this is a development which runs counter to the appropriate horizontal and collegial structure which should characterise the well-functioning academy. The present Review Committee needs to identify ways of restoring a fabric of commitment and a climate of trust and confidence to our universities, without which they cannot be expected to function at anything like their full constructive potential.

3.3.2. Past and present legislators of various political convictions need to assume their portion of the responsibility for the serious erosion of the fiduciary culture that should characterise university life, work, and culture. Moreover, it needs to be recognised that the present `unified system' encourages diverse forms of monopolistic practice at different levels -- by the few strong and large universities at the expense of the others; by the Australian Vice Chancellors Committee (AVCC); and by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which has usurped or absorbed the former university staff associations.

3.3.3. The rise of such monopolistic practices has had ramifications throughout the university structure: at the corporate level where ill-suited mergers have been forced upon smaller institutions, and at the academic level where larger departmental and faculty units decide to close down smaller units without any regard for their intrinsic merits and solely for `bottom line' budgetary reasons. It is no exaggeration to say that the impact upon the culture and morale of many university departments has been little short of devastating. This is no way to proceed, and no way to make progress.

3.3.4. We cannot return to the past, but it would seem appropriate that a body, not unlike the former Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission (CTEC) is required. With the structural changes to industrial relations under successive federal governments the role of the vice chancellors has become extremely ambiguous. This is due to a corporatist view of university management which now treats them, not as primus inter pares in the academic community, but as CEO's who are increasingly bureaucratically isolated from their own constituencies in their respective universities.

3.3.5. Important questions concerning the financing of higher education can only begin to be addressed adequately when the structure, place and task of university and other types of higher education have been identified and are respected. This requires the kind of fundamental discussion that has yet to take place in Australia on a significant scale. It only sometimes surfaces in the media, it does not appear to be on any party political agendas, and, sadly, was not included in the guidelines issued by DEETYA for the making of Submissions to the Review Committee.

3.3.6. ACHEA is of the view that defining the operative principles to be applied in the financing of universities and university based research should not be attempted until a measure of public clarity has been achieved in respect of (1) the nature and task of science and scholarship in the entire fabric of our multi-institutional social life; and (2) the nature and task of universities among and alongside other institutions of post-secondary education and training.

3.3.7. There is no doubt that Australia needs universities. However, there are widespread doubts across the higher educational `sector' as to whether we still have genuine universities in this country. Those institutions which still go by the name `university' (as part of the `unified system') seem to have lost touch with some of the key characteristics which ensure that a university in name remains a university in practice. These doubts must be faced. They must be considered carefully. After all, they are doubts which have emerged from within a `sector' which has the people qualified to judge whether the universities have lost their way. Simply formulating a new set of funding formulae, which gives a separate line-item for `universities', is not going to suffice. Questions of funding higher education, the present universities, and higher education research, are of little consequence if what successive governments and vice chancellors are pleased to call `their' universities are no longer fulfilling their mandate to be institutions for training in science and scholarship.

PART FOUR
Statement of Recommendations and key points.

4.1. Give clear and unambiguous statutory recognition, and therefore full public legal status, to the right to establish non-government funded non-state controlled universities throughout the Commonwealth of Australia.

4.2. Financially encourage, by the introduction of tax exemption and tax deduction provisions, the establishment of such non-government funded non-state controlled universities throughout the Commonwealth of Australia.

4.3. Make public its definition of the role and task of the `unified system' universities, in clear distinction from post-secondary education designed for professional and employment related training.

4.4. Promote and financially encourage, by the introduction of tax exemption and tax deduction provisions, legitimate educational savings on the part of all Australian households.

4.5. Promote and financially encourage, by the introduction of tax exemption and tax deduction provisions, the growth and diversity of non-state educational and research funding foundations.

End of Submission.

Rev. Dr. Rowland S. Ward,
(President and Public Officer of the Association).

Rev. Wim. F. van Brussel,
(Vice-President of the Association).

Dr. Bruce C. Wearne,
(General Secretary of the Association).

Dr. Keith C. Sewell,
(Director of Development of the Association).

17 April, 1997.

Appendix

Human life in its entirety is religion, coram Deo. Consequently, science and scholarship, along with every other facet of human activity, unfolds as the service of either the only one true God or of an idol. The scriptures, the Word of God written, in instructing us of God, ourselves, and the order of creation, are the divinely inspired and authoritative means whereby the Holy Spirit draws and attaches us to, and instructs and illuminates us in the Truth, which is Jesus Christ the Messiah. This Jesus Christ, revealed to us in the scriptures as the Word of God incarnate, is the risen Redeemer and Renewer of our life in its entirety, and therefore also of all our science and scholarship. God upholds as His central purpose for His Creation the covenantal communion of humanity with Himself in Christ in communion with the Holy Spirit. True religion arises from the knowledge of God which is made possible when the human heart is renewed through the Word of God by the Holy Spirit. In this way religion plays its decisive ordering role in our understanding of everyday life and experience as well as in the theoretically focused callings of science and scholarship. The concerted and systematic pursuit of theoretical thought in a community of scholars is a necessary part of the obedient and thankful response of God's people to the cultural mandate. The task of the theorist is to formulate and articulate a scientific and scholarly account of the order of creation for the Glory of God and the benefit of the entire community. Moreover, because of God's gracious preservation of His creation in the face of human disobedience, those who reject the Word of God as the ordering principle for life, science, and scholarship, may nevertheless provide significant insights into the creation order of which we are all but a part, even as the central religious antithesis in all human life remains undiminished. We therefore renounce any attempt at, and reject as fundamentally unsustainable, the synthesis of scripturally directed learning with any other standpoint. The scientific and scholarly enterprise is to be undertaken in the God-given freedom of a full and free submission to the Word of God, and not least as the latter guarantees the distinctive integrity of diverse societal structures. Accordingly, the responsible freedom of the scientist and scholar must be upheld and protected against any constraint and dominion of church, state, commerce, or any other societal structure. All science and scholarship pursued in faithful obedience to the divine calling will continually seek to heed the directive authority of the Word of God, will acknowledge His Law to which the creation in all of its diversity is subject, and will freely and wholeheartedly bow before Christ's Kingship over all science and scholarship.

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