Submission to the Review of Higher Education Financing and Policy
Prepared by Professor Ian Chubb, Vice-Chancellor and endorsed by the Academic Senate
Flinders University of South Australia
SUMMARY
....(the) health of (our) society is uniquely coupled to that of the universities. To a greater degree than in any other country this nation looks to its universities both for new knowledge and for young trained minds prepared to use it effectively. But just at a time when much is expected of our universities, after more than a decade of retrenchment and belt-tightening, they find themselves with obsolete equipment, ageing facilities, and growing shortages of faculty members and students in many important fields.....Our conclusion is clear: our universities today simply cannot respond to society's expectations of them or discharge their national responsibilities in research and education without substantial increased support. []
The society? American. Different from Australia? No.
The higher education sector in Australia should be:
• a single-tier national higher education system;
• able to cater for the geographic, social and cultural diversity of this nation and its economic needs, through its own intrinsic diversity and quality;
• one in which each university operates at internationally acceptable standards relevant to all that it does;
• large enough to ensure that all qualified students likely to benefit are able to enter - in the national interest;
• one in which all teachers are active learners with appropriate financial support;
It must be:
• predominantly publicly funded because Australia's interests lie in the benefits that flow to the whole community as the nation's social, cultural and economic wealth is increased through education and skill development;
• publicly funded at a high enough level to enable it to meet community needs and to operate at high standards;
• block-funded to facilitate managed change as it is needed.
It needs to be:
• able to operate in a stable funding and policy environment;
• free from Government interference whilst accountable to Government for the expenditure of public funds. Specifically, each institution should be:
- responsible for accrediting, monitoring and evaluating its own programs;
- responsible for determining whom to employ, whom to admit to study, what to teach and what to research.
This submission does not attempt to cover every point raised in the Review Guidelines. Instead, it is focused on just a few of the many possible issues.
It is anticipated that more of the Committee's thinking will be revealed in the discussion paper, to which a more detailed response may be made.
THEME 1.
The role of higher education in Australia's society and economy
An historical perspective
The role of the university has been debated from the earliest times: the professorships founded at Oxford and Cambridge, in very ancient times, for the three faculties (of theology, law and medicine) clearly show that an adaptation of the course of study to the future destination of the pupil was contemplated in the original organisation of our universities [] at a time when the possession of a university degree was nothing else than the possession of a diploma to exercise the function of teaching []. But then among so many great foundations of colleges in Europe, I find it strange that they are dedicated to professions and none left free to arts and sciences at large. .... This I take to be a great cause that hath hindered the progression of learning because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passages [ ] While the extent to which all branches of learning, both professional and preparatory to the professions, have been suffered to decay at Oxford ....so....Oxford and Cambridge might have discovered that their unwillingness to resume their ancient functions had relegated them to a very obscure position .... had it not been for the amenities of life there and their social prestige.. [3]
History tells us that this is not the first debate about the role our universities, and it nicely highlights the pitfalls that lie ahead if we assume that the snapshot we see now is all that there is to see. The university is not now, nor has it ever been, only one thing or another. Except possibly at the extremes, there is no clear set of things that are proper for universities to engage with for all time and others that are not. There never has been. Universities are influenced by the communities that nurture them, and they have adapted as their communities modify their expectations and as the world in which they operate changes over a long period of time. Universities therefore seek a balance: responsive to community needs in positive ways on the one hand, while leading its development through high quality, intellectually demanding, research and teaching of their own determination.
Balance is important. While some would argue that universities should exercise their autonomous right to head in their own chosen directions wherever they lead, and there is indeed a need for them to lead in that way, there are others who suggest that universities should take even more notice of their community and student expectations. Bok [], for example, reminds us that the American taxpayer provided some $40-50 billion p.a. to public universities (in 1990) and asks whether they could possibly expect to go on receiving such support from the nation's taxpayers without making efforts to respond to society's needs? The same question is relevant here; that universities both respond to our communities and their needs and lead them is manifest in much contemporary research and teaching.
An Australian challenge
There are great challenges facing our community, and some are beyond our direct control. A frank appraisal of the geo-political outlook, for example, suggests a less than cheerful prospect. Australia has no natural allies. It does not have a large enough population to sustain its quality of life with ease. Its population is not large enough for it to create internally a market large enough to sustain its own producers and so to create enough work; nor is it large enough to be of critical importance to foreign producers. Australia is not an international focal point like some countries, so there is no natural reason for Australia to be a significant part of dynamic international groupings. If we are to prosper and to provide a quality of life worthy of our citizens we will need to look after ourselves, and work for it.
We are left with one realistic option, a focus on quality.....more than ever before, the reservoir of talent in our people will have to eclipse our great natural resources as the determinant of our success. We will have to use our intelligence and wit to cement the processes of change and to secure and improve our place in the world. This involves working better and smarter, scuttling mediocrity for quality and distinction. We cannot enter the next century rollicking on the sheep's back or creaking and swaying in some coal truck [].
A focus on education and skill development is not unique to us; countries around the world are placing great emphasis on advanced education and training. In the United States, for example, a minimum of 85% of all new jobs by the year 2000 will require at least some post-secondary education - because changes in the economy are placing an unprecedented demand on the intellectual skills and knowledge of American workers [5]. American analysts have described their modern university as pivotal to the post-industrial society since it is primarily responsible for two of the elements critical for such a society - new discoveries and highly trained personnel - and a major contributor to the third - expert knowledge. It is no different here.
In Australia we have in place a national higher education system that is generally of high standard; indeed, its performance and standards have been internationally referenced since the establishment of the very first university, and it continues.
• The higher education system can help secure our future - and maintaining its capacity to position Australia to advantage in an unfriendly world must be the main objective of this Review.
The value of diversity in maintaining capacity
The Coalition (then in Opposition) recognised the value of difference in its policy Quality, diversity and choice [] released just before the last Federal election when it promised to encourage universities to build on their areas of strength and comparative advantage. These differences allow the higher education system to reflect the social, cultural and geographic diversity of the community and to accommodate change.
Some universities have quite properly built a more skill-based, more practical element into their educational programs while others follow a more traditional path. Practical (or vocationally-oriented) elements that are integral components of courses are not to be eschewed; they lead to desirable attributes in practitioners and meet the community expectation that a university system will develop people who can think as well as work competently; people who can apply their knowledge and skills effectively. But the balance in the courses in different universities will vary.
A degree from one institution may well bear the same name as one from another therefore, but be different in style, content and approach and result in different skills and attributes in the graduates; it should ever be thus.
Remember:
• No two Australian universities are the same. No two universities have identical student and staff profiles. No two universities approach teaching and learning in any one discipline in an identical way. No two degrees are the same - the simple fact of different staff ensures that outcome. No two universities have identical admissions policies or approach equal opportunity, affirmative action or their selections from disadvantaged groups in the same way. No two universities have identical research profiles, though all have one.
• Diversity is a proper objective of a national system in a geographically, socially and culturally diverse country.
• No new funding mechanism is needed to encourage diversity - it already exists.
Higher education and the pursuit of knowledge
Universities are characterised by their commitment to intellectual inquiry. This commitment manifests itself in different ways: these include the seeking out of new knowledge through pure research of an original kind; the search for new explanations and understandings through analysis and reinterpretation of existing knowledge; the application of existing knowledge to new problems or new knowledge to old problems.
Academic staff in universities engage in these various forms of inquiry because it is one of the responsibilities of their vocation; as well as a requirement to teach, academics are required to commit themselves to research or to some other scholarly activity besides teaching. And it is they who are charged with the responsibility of transmitting that knowledge or new insight gleaned from their scholarship to students in the curiosity-led learning environment that their own activities create. They teach in a way that makes clear that there is yet more to know, and always will be, and they show how uncertainty can be accommodated by thinking, synthesising and applying knowledge. They are staff whose personal commitment to learning is inculcated into the attitudes of their students as they lead them to question today's wisdom and to understand the transient nature of much of today's knowledge and understandings - as they encourage them to ask 'why'.
The intellectual debate between students and staff is part of the lifeblood of universities and their educational process; it is encouraged and expected. With face-to-face teaching there is a diversity of presentation crucial to supporting the development of new ideas and the capacity of students to reflect critically on received texts. This is an important point in an environment which places increasing emphasis on the use of electronic media for teaching purposes. Whilst we already take advantage of the opportunities created by developments in information technology, and will continue to do so, teaching through the electronic media should never be the sole medium in higher education.
• Our graduates will not be fazed by the need to learn more, nor will they be made uncomfortable by new knowledge as it is created, or feel diminished because more recent graduates know different things. They can accommodate change and uncertainty. Our educational process prepares graduates for these eventualities.
Twenty years from now
When we think of 'the role' 20 years from now, we should remember that a study of forecasts for 1978 made in 1956 gives good reason to be sceptical of forecasts for 2000 made in 1978 ...It is much easier to get things right, or at any rate not to appear wrong, when projecting directions of movement rather than actual movement [].
During the next 20 years we could have at least 7 elections, with who knows how many changes of Government and who knows how many changes of Minister, each of whom will seek to put their own stamp on their domain.
Influencing the direction of movement is therefore more important than presuming to prescribe and describe the details of actual movement. A 20 year span is problematic, however, even for broad directions; it is at once too long and too short. We actually need planning in some detail on a 1, 2 or 3 year timetable, but within a stable framework that extends well beyond 20 years.
Effective higher education systems are ones that can prepare communities for the uncertainties of the future. They need a stable policy environment and adequate funding: educational programs spanning three, four, five or six years, and research projects that may last even longer, simply cannot be maintained if relevant polices or funding arrangements change frequently and/or capriciously. The Coalition noted staff morale, commitment to quality and excellence, and pride in the institution are important ingredients in building a successful university. ... and given the need to ensure academic freedom, this flexibility (in employment) needs to be balanced with an adequate level of security of employment... ambiguous funding commitments of recent times, and confused directions in relation to wage negotiations, have caused unnecessary distress and distraction...to the detriment of staff and students [7].
Higher education is a strategic element in the fundamental infrastructure of Australia, and government policy should be framed with this in mind. If this Review is to increase the value of Australia's universities to the nation, it should not be transfixed by the notion of '20 years' and lapse into some form of fortune telling. Its Report should identify the importance (and validity) of:
• support for public universities and adequate public funding
• accessability for students regardless of income, location or background
• community interest and influence
• diversity in academic domains and in the approach to teaching and research
• setting broad directions for the future while committing to a stable policy context for the long haul.
What attributes will higher education graduates need to operate effectively in their personal and professional lives in this emerging new environment?
Ethics. Knowledge. Skills. Confidence. A capacity to self-evaluate accurately. 'Core' values such as honesty. Commitment to excellence. Objectivity. Flexibility. Enthusiasm for learning. Intellectual curiosity.
What role should Government play in ensuring the higher education sector makes the best contribution to Australia's society, culture and economy?
The following broad principles should underpin Government policies on higher education:
- Government must commit to public higher education and see it as an investment not simply as a cost. It must accept that governments in 'competitor' nations are shifting the goal posts by investing heavily in higher education (including research in universities) to secure their 'quality future'. In our view adequate public funding of higher education is one of the ways governments invest taxpayer funds in the quality of the future of their nation higher education in Australia has been and remains overwhelmingly publicly funded ....the Coalition accepts the responsibility that flows from this historical fact because of the important role that universities play within the wider community as a focus for intellectual, cultural and economic development ...and that a strong and viable higher education sector is, unquestionably, of enormous national benefit [7].
- Government should ensure that the system is funded well enough for Australia's universities to meet internationally accepted standards in all that they do.
- Government must resist pressure for an entry system based on capacity to pay; it must embrace the notion of entry for all who can benefit and who are qualified for admission regardless of income, location or background, for the benefit of all: ensuring that financial, social and geographic factors do not act as a barrier to higher education for appropriately qualified students. The Coalition seeks to ensure that all individuals have a fair and equitable opportunity to benefit from a higher education [7].
- Government should explicitly value diversity within the system and understand that universities will differentiate as they cater for the needs of their local communities. It must also be understood that community expectations and customs impose some limits on the extent of specialisation. Undergraduate students, for example, move to attend university in special circumstances for a few courses and only in fairly small numbers; local communities expect their university to be reasonably comprehensive with a fair range of courses.
- Government should establish a stable funding and policy environment . Already too many people in universities spend too much time either responding to changed rules, supplying endless statistics, coping with seemingly purposeless tinkering, applying endlessly for the basic funds we need just to do our jobs, responding to frequent reviews of something or other... . The level of frustration is high.
More importantly, perhaps, we need a stable environment in which to plan our staffing and student profiles: for example, the increasing proportion of academic staff employed on short-term contracts (a response to our inability to predict the future with certainty) is inimical to research productivity as most research programs take longer than three years to establish.
Government should also recognise that as a significant earner of export income, the potential of higher education will be diminished if relevant policies and funding mechanisms chop and change to suit the expediency of the moment.
Theme 2 .
Factors affecting the demand for and provision of higher education over the next 10 to 20 years
What factors are likely to influence the demand for higher education places .. e.g. regional differences; ....?
Community expectations of access to university have risen as the sector has expanded and the need for skills-based employment become more obvious. It can be confidently predicted that demand for higher education will increase as new jobs are created and new forms of work and skills are needed. Continuing education as graduates return to university to take postgraduate study or to renew their skills and knowledge will be a part of that demand. The increase in first degree graduates will also lead to increased demand for postgraduate qualifications - as will the increasing demands of professional associations.
While this is probably true for Australia as a whole, South Australia as a region has special needs because of the nature of its workforce which has historically a relatively low skills base. This must change as the economy is revitalised and the industrial infrastructure redeveloped. The universities are an essential element in these changes and, while not alone, their importance was recognised by the Coalition: the higher education sector is critically important to rebuilding competitive economies in states such as Victoria and South Australia...The Coalition...will not penalise areas that traditionally have enjoyed higher participation rates yet still experience significant levels of unmet demand [7].
What is the scope to improve the flexibility and responsiveness of higher education providers through systemic, organisational and technological changes?
Three general points:
1 The system is flexible and it is responsive. The system's responsiveness may never seem quick enough for the impatient observer. But nor is it well understood that when a university admits students it commits to that program and its availability. If a university no longer accepts new students into that program, it has to teach it until most (possibly all) students have left - a further one, two, three, four or five years. There are therefore difficulties in shifting resources from one discipline to another if demand shifts rapidly. So universities may seem slow, inflexible and unresponsive from the outside - but the length of the pipeline of students already enrolled will always constrain the speed with which they can make change obvious. Of course we could transfer students to another university, but: (a) there must be one nearby willing to accept students and the associated costs; (b) diversity (a good thing) has encouraged difference, and difference means that the educational program will not be the same even in the one discipline. A transfer could cost students substantially - in time, money and uncertainty.
The diagram below demonstrates that there have been significant shifts in the enrolment profile of institutions as they have responded to changes in community expectations and demand from students, employers and government. The bars show the difference between the actual enrolments in 1996 by broad field of study and what they would have been had the percentage distribution in 1988 been repeated in 1996. This 9 year span represents roughly two average degree cycles.
2 While any university will try to improve its performance on a continuous basis, we know that our ability to change will be dependent in part on the adequacy of funding levels. There should be no assumption that technological change will solve all the problems (nor create them all). Technological advances, systemic and organisational changes all have real up front and continuing costs and are not a panacea.
3 The single-tier system we presently have has the best chance of accommodating the diversity of the Australian community it serves. Structural reform, or special funding mechanisms aimed at creating further distinctions between institutions, is unnecessary and more likely to be destructive than helpful - the self-interest of the few arguing otherwise will be well cloaked in sanctimony.
Theme 3.
Regulatory and administrative framework for higher education
As a system we have initiated many measures designed to improve existing practice and assure and monitor quality of performance:
- we use course committees with students and external advisers routinely;
- we monitor the acceptability of our graduates, their employment destinations, their evaluation of their course;
- we assess student impressions of teaching and modify our teaching in response to these;
- we have internal peer review processes and externally-focused reviews of our programs;
- our staff produce scholarly work that, after peer review, appears in the national and international 'market-place' through publication. They can be promoted only after rigorous assessment by their peers on a balance of teaching, research and other activities not just on one of them;
- most research support is allocated only after rigorous peer review - national and international;
- we recruit staff from other Australian universities and from overseas and have recruited internationally from the first day of the first university [];
- we respond to some 80 professional associations and so have external 'accreditation' of an increasing number of our courses by practitioners;
- students are attracted to Australia to every one of our universities from all over the world- and return to their home countries with useful, recognised qualifications. Our graduates can go anywhere for further study or employment;
- we have quality assurance reviews.
Given what is already in place, an appropriate framework to ensure the quality of performance in the sector would be to have universities report on an annual basis about the mechanisms they themselves use to ensure the high quality of their education and research. Such a framework would avoid undue restrictions on the sector's ability to innovate and, through a diversity of mechanisms to address different needs within a diverse sector, allow a reasonable level of distinctiveness (and competition) between institutions.
But what is a reasonable level of competition? It is unlikely that there will be only better outcomes in a climate where there is competition for most things: local and overseas students, infrastructure funds, research support. Competition (or rivalry) is not by definition constructive: co-operation may often lead to greater benefits. For example, it is not in the interests of the system as a whole for institutions to seek to recruit students mid-course who are enrolled at other institutions as has happened this year. Further, a fragmented system will add less value to the nation than a cohesive one; just as competition between States mitigates against Australia's interests internationally.
• We must be mindful of the implicit objective of current policy that obliges universities to co-operate to maximise value-for-taxpayer funding in an environment that has been deliberately set up for rivalry. The way this tension is handled within the sector over the next few years will be vital to the future shape and health of higher education in Australia. Increasing competition must not produce an outcome that diminishes quality, equity or access.
Theme 4.
Financing higher education teaching and research training
The push to reduce public expenditure on universities below reasonable levels is hard to understand. Given the enormous national benefit that accrues to the public in general and to business in particular from a vibrant higher education sector, why would any government take funding decisions that inflict damage on something so important?
• The stripping of a vital public infrastructure (as distinct from making it more effective and efficient) is antithetical to a flourishing system of enormous national benefit [7] and will come at great cost in the medium to long term.
Recognising that higher education provides a mix of private and public benefits, what should be the balance between the private and public contributions?
Coalition policy committed the parties in Government to maintaining public funding and to ensuring that all individuals have a fair and equitable opportunity to benefit from a higher education. While noting that those participating...receive a personal benefit ....it is important that the deferred payment is reasonable and not subject to sudden alterations, as has been the case ..... the Coalition will oppose attempts by public universities to introduce pay-as-you-go fees at the undergraduate level as an alternative to the HECS. The Coalition also made clear its commitment to support students by retaining as a minimum .....the current level of real expenditure on AUSTUDY [7].
Notwithstanding the authority of this commitment, we could continue the time-consuming but inevitably inconclusive debate about the proportion of public versus private benefit. Where precisely is the point where the enormous national benefit is lost if fees are set high? The point at which a fee, deferred or otherwise, becomes a disincentive to students or to groups within the community will only be revealed after the damage has been done. Australia is already at the high end of the scale of fees internationally (see AVCC submission) and the fee level will become a deterrent if it is not already one.
On top of the personal levy in the form of HECS (in return, it is argued, for the personal benefit) students also contribute through the progressive income tax system as their income climbs and, of course, they sacrifice income in order to study. By contrast, less effort has been made to recover a contribution from the other main private beneficiary - business. Like graduates, business contributes generally to government revenue through company tax; but there is no extra impost even though higher education contributes to the viability and profitability of Australian businesses in direct and indirect ways. If the 'private benefit' argument is pursued to its logical end, all beneficiaries and not just the students must be expected to contribute - though there are dangers as the Coalition recognised when it asserted that while it would at least maintain the level of Commonwealth funding to universities both in terms of operating grants and research grants ... it also supports expanding the funding base of universities - provided that the integrity of higher education is maintained with no compromise of independence or intellectual honesty. ....new funding must supplement and not replace the public contribution. And through adequate public funding, the Coalition will ensure that there is not an unacceptable distortion of university research from basic to applied just as it will support some courses which always will be essentially reliant on public funding [7].
• Alternative funding regimes that result in more of the ambiguous funding commitments of recent times and reduce the stability in the funding base, or distort the objectives of the system, will diminish the system at exactly the time its contribution to education and training has become even more critical to our future.
Theme 5.
Funding for Higher Education Research
The state of disrepair of university equipment, libraries and fundamental infrastructure combined with reduced intramural funds to invest in infrastructure threatens the fabric of universities. Extra funding for external granting agencies with their own determination of what to fund, and where, is not the solution: it makes research in the universities less predictable, patchy and at the worst unstrategic because the universities and their 'research management plans' have limited influence over the outcome. While more of this competitive funding is desirable, the real solution to long term research in universities is more funding for research through university grants. The strategic development of research, the development of new staff and new areas of research, and research training all need intramural support and locally developed infrastructure.
A threat to research is a threat to universities. Research is sometimes seen as either an activity fundamental to higher education or simply something else that can get done in a university, if the price and the person (people) are right. In my view it is unequivocally the former. Research and other scholarly activity are an integral part of what we do; as well as yielding new knowledge and new interpretations and analyses, they create the environment for learning based on intellectual curiosity and discovery. Pulling out that thread will unravel the complex tapestry.
It is not argued that every single academic, by definition or by inclination, is a leading- edge researcher through the whole of a working life, and committed to original work of pure scholarship. The strong professional schools in every university, for example, do not only prepare students for specialised careers. Some staff at least concern themselves with questions of practical interest, and investigate the problems that the practitioners their graduates will become have to confront.
Research in universities is therefore important in at least three ways:
• the new discoveries;
• the expert knowledge;
• the environment for learning it creates in which students (and staff) understand the transient nature of much of today's knowledge and work to extend it, understand it, question it, re-interpret it, apply it.
The funding mix
I believe that the present mix of funding mechanisms for research is about right. It is important that there be research agencies with special funding to secure what amounts to research by contract and on merit. But it is also important that universities be adequately funded to maintain the capacity to develop their strategic directions, and that means teaching and research, not teaching or research.
There should be no assumption that all the good research in Australian universities is to be found in only a few of them simply because some individuals say it is so; there is no evidence to support this assumption. Equally, the seductive notion of concentration of effort would have to be carefully implemented since a policy that led to a consolidation of all the learner/teachers (or the overwhelming majority of them) in only a few institutions would inflict untold damage on the system as a whole. And we are a system, not 35+ individual institutions doing precisely as we please. A small number of universities already receive the lion’s share of research funding; and if they do not have enough it is because of an inadequate amount not an aberrant distribution.
Staff, wherever employed, should have the opportunity to secure research support through block grants to their universities and for individual research projects where the determinants are merit and the socio-economic value to the society as a whole.