Incoming VC: radical change for Aust. unis
[ UniNews Vol. 13, No. 23
13 - 27 December 2004 ]
Australian universities are on the threshold of radical change as the Dawkins system which has governed higher education in Australia since 1988 comes speedily to an end, Vice-Chancellor designate Professor Glyn Davis told a packed public lecture at the University last month.
Delivering the inaugural Melbourne Politics Lecture,Tiers or tears? The regulation of Australian higher education, Professor Davis (right) said the Dawkins policy now shapes thinking in the bureaucracy and universities alike.
The Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) protocols prescribe the Dawkins approach of a single model by requiring the creation of new knowledge through research.
Australia, he pointed out, now has 37 public variations of the standard Australian university of 2004 large, multi-campus, funding within a common framework, offering a mix of undergraduate degrees and professional qualifications, aspiring to research.
This contrasts with the US where half of all Bachelor students enrol in institutions that do not award doctoral degrees.
Professor Davis identified three pressures privatisation from within, the growth of private providers and international trade which are challenging a regulatory system designed in an era before the world wide web or trade liberalisation, and undermining the Dawkins model.
The Commonwealth Government, once the main source of funding for tertiary education in Australia, now provides a minority of resources.
Domestic students now pay much of the cost of their education up to 85 per cent in law and 74 per cent in business while universities rely on entrepreneurial activity to maintain income, he said.
Once, Canberra provided universities with funding for new capital but the remnant Capital Development Pool can now meet only a small percentage of sector needs. Faced with constant demands for new infrastructure, the sector has gone to the market and borrowed.
Professor Davis said that to repay this debt Australias public universities are now financially dependent on international students.
Even a modest downturn in the international market and public universities would be in crisis all over Australia, he warned.
The MCEETYA protocols, he says, are the only thing protecting Australias public universities from a flood of new competition from private providers keen to enter the lucrative and growing international education market.
Private providers need government to walk away from the MCEETYA protocols and instead allow teaching-only universities, he said, noting that economic pressures had already driven some public universities to establish teaching-only operations at city sites interstate that cater to students in a narrow range of business and IT fields.
Professor Davis warns that free trade agreements and electronic commerce will make it difficult to maintain a closed tertiary education market in Australia.
The United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement, he says, is being finalised at a time US universities must rethink their international strategy.
He suggests that the venture where programs from Carnegie Mellon will be taught in Adelaide to Asian students who want American education but the access and safety of Australia, points to a future in which foreign universities set up teaching-only campuses in Australia in direct competition with existing public institutions.
Calling for a serious debate on the contradictions in the present regulatory system, Professor Davis said the regulation of higher education had serious consequences for the types of universities operating in Australia and the choices open to students.
Debate needs to range beyond institutions and their interests, he said. The argument needs lots of voices not just ministers and vice-chancellors, bureaucrats and shareholders but everyone who cares about higher education.
Professor Davis full lecture is at http://www.unimelb.edu.au/speeches
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