Submission to
the Review of Higher Education Financing and Policy

by

Conal Condren
Director, Humanities Research Program
University of New South Wales

20 May 1997

Personal submission.

When visiting UNSW I was one of the staff group with whom you had tea and some discussion of the issues that concern you. I have continued to reflect on some of the matters aired and offer the following, I fear fairly random comments as one who has been involved with the running of the University, a reviewer of other institutions, as one with recent experience of the British system and above all as one who is primarlily at this university because of a commitment to research and scholarship, if that distinction is a stable one.

1. As a sometime member of the University's Research Management Committee it did become apparent to me how constrained we were by the relative lack of discretionary funding. I believe that providing more would overall be of benefit. First universities have had an increasing sense declining autonomy. Symbolically at least, greater discretion in the distribution of funds would help change that sense. Second, there would be more opportunity for imaginative research management; that is, a greater opportunity for genuinely informed judgements to invest in potential and take risks. It may be, though this does not follow, that those involved in research teams might need spend less of their time organising necessary support.
   
   
2. The national investment in research and scholarship has to remain substantial. As I understand it this country does not, and never has invested heavily in its universities in comparison with other OECD countries; and there is not, as for example in the U.S.A. a culture of academic philanthropy. Over the last generation universities have had to do a good deal of the research and development which in other countries has been expected of industry, Australian companies buying in research and development from elsewhere. UNSW has unquestionably been one of the beneficiaries of the accepted need to develop research at home. It has exploited its position well but I doubt whether this university could turn substantially more to private funding to make up shortfalls from the public purse. The most important theoretical work is unlikely to get the support it needs from companies wanting a short to medium term return and some fields of study are best served by shunning private investment. It would I think be bad for studies in politics to be funded privately.
   
   
3. I believe that within the resources available, one constant question should be borne in mind: How can adequate time be preserved to allow academics to do their core work of teaching and research? It is the erosion of time that in my experience has been the main worry. Overall, the system has become increasingly bureaucratic partly because of government policy requiring greater and more regular accountability. So, an increasing proportion of the money going to universities goes directly into administration costs. At the very least I would like to see the Committee acknowledge that diminishing time for the central work of our vocation damages university life more than anything. Scientific research teams no doubt show enterprise in stitching together deals to get adequate finance but this is an uneconomic use of their time and most I suspect resent it. Being good at such entreprenurial activity does not necessarily mean good research. Over the last 3-4 years a number of fine scholars I know have left the Sydney universities for America and Britain. In all cases the move was reluctant and in all it was made because the better conditions meant more time to do their work. Academics are not really in the business for high pay. Something has just come across my desk which is sympomatic of a good deal that has been going wrong. Deetya pays a great deal of attention to publication rates and apparently cannot find around 20% of publications as listed by universities. It is thus auditing, I assume through some private firm, publications. This University has not been audited yet but should the auditors descend, I am expected to keep photocopies of full details of all publications in the university. (see attached note) This will be repeated for every member of my school and involve the creation of substantial files, taking up valuable secretarial time. The auditors clearly cannot be expected to go to the Library. Frankly I find the exercise insulting.
   
   
4. Interest was expressed in Martin Krygier's reflections on the quality of university life in Eastern Europe in comparison with some of his experience in North America. Eastern Europe represents an extreme. Pretty well all the universities have is a surviving culture of intellectual activity. In some cases this culture has survived for a very long time and despite hardships and lack of resources we find it difficult to imagine. Eastern Europe must be fun to visit where the exchange of ideas is fresh air; but in my experience and in that Of my Colleagues, intellectually Eastern Europe is very much behind the western world and contact from the west is seen as a form of developmental aid not intercourse between equals. Britain, and some part of the American system (it is too various to generalise about in this context) constitute another extreme. It is marked by increasing control, relative decline in funding, increasing student load, increasing management and monitoring of research money. These are all pressures towards intellectual mediocrity if on the plus side they do give greater accountability. All 'quality' controls acting as criteria for distribution of resourses are quantity controls. We have despite trying, not been able to overcome this problem in tallying up research productivity. Those universities in Europe Britain and the United States and Canada that are retaining and increasing their status at the expense of others are those most immune from such pressures; in a word most immune from the governmental policies of the last generation. The rich are getting richer mainly because their percieved excellence attracts more of the best students and money.
   
   There is no similar culture and private wealth within the universities here to make it look, as it does in Britain that quality is being maintained because some institutions are relatively immune to management and training pressures. Nevertheless there is a myth of the unified system. In the USA the word university means very little and so quite dear hierarchies have developed and are constantly watched in order to compensate for the lack of descriptive power of the term. The situation is similarly pretty clear in Britain, though there is only one effective system not two as in the USA. Hierarchies are becoming more evident here also; a good policy might be to recognise them and undo the sham equality suggested by the Dawkins reforms.
   
   Any Government policy that compromises the internationality of Australian universities will do great damage. There are of course important and local foci of attention but universities must be encouraged to participate in non-parochial concerns. Thus by internationalisation I do not mean more asian students, that is an economically driven local interest, I mean full participation in the 'invisible college' of international research scholarship and exchange.
   
   
5. 0n the surface the British model of resource allocation is attractive because so much depends upon competition. There are two draw-backs: enormous amounts of time is spent on preparing and presenting cases, a further distraction from actually doing any substantive work. One year out of three is unduly disrupted. During that year an effective game of musical chairs takes place where universities try to poach people with multiple publications creating extraordinary discrepancies between perceptions and realities of quality. A university which might have been good because it had fostered excellent research might have departments effectively destroyed (Last year Durham lost both its very productive and high profile history professors who went to different much weaker institutions) and those in need of boosting get people where there are fewer resources and little research. Mobility is an excellent thing but it can be too distruptive and the time lag between acquisition of new people and utilisation of any resources they might bring through a funding formula is too great for there not to remain serious dislocations.

Overall universities like any complex institutions have ways of adapting or subverting governmental policy controls, which results in further controls and so on. We could end with a system as complex as the Tax Laws which as it becomes more complex creates more loopholes.

I do hope some of this is of sufficent relevance to interest the Committee.

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