Social Change is 'Core Business' for Universities
5 June 2004
For a few days I am back in my other home on the other side of
the world, and the similarities and contrasts with my Sunshine
Coast home could not be more stark.
Merthyr Tydfil, once the iron and coal capital of Europe, has
been in steady decline for over a century. People have been
leaving, industries have come and gone and not one is safe, there
is no longer even one coal mine, youth unemployment is staggeringly
high, welfare dependency is the highest in Britain, great mansions
of the iron masters are in decay or are museums and much of the old
town is dead or has been persistently vandalised by alienated
youth. The new university here is trying to catalyse new industry
and regenerate a 'Valleys' economy that has been in ruins for so
long. It rains a lot. It's cool even in summer. The landscape has
been desecrated and in many areas it is a wilderness of waste-coal
tips. Ghosts of the past are everywhere.
It's a world away from the Sunshine Coast that is looking to the
future rather than the past, creating new opportunities rather than
being in damage control over industrial exploitation, experiencing
growth based on lifestyle attractions rather than massive
depopulation. And the climate is good!
In common, however, the two regions have a weak industrial base,
a loss of talented people, too few graduates and new entrepreneurs
leading sustainable businesses.
The regional challenges for this local university and the
Sunshine Coast's University are formidable.
Whilst both universities are strongly regionally engaged, one in
addressing the appalling legacy of industrial failures to recreate
a more secure future, the other is addressing a level of regional
growth and expectation that is outstripping the actual services and
infrastructure available.
Whether it is our own University Council seeking confirmation
that our performance is comparable with our international and
national counterparts, or whether it is the State or Commonwealth
governments, or quality audit agencies, they all increasingly want
evidence that progress is just not claimed, but can be
demonstrated.
The difficulties for these two universities in accomplishing
progress in such very different places, is that they have to
contribute significantly to changing their contexts, their
societies, their economics, local aspirations and the region's
place in the world, in order that students can also benefit.
In earlier times, universities operated in very different and
more detached ways. They highlighted differences between 'town and
gown', and largely ignored the contexts in which they were located
in favour of concentrating on 'core business' which was then
defined as academic endeavour, untroubled by the world outside
Academe. Graduates had few troubles in securing jobs on
graduation.
The 'core business' of universities with huge increases in
student numbers, like the Sunshine Coast and Glamorgan, are now
inextricably linked with their contexts and have as much of an
obligation to address facets of cultural and economic change, as
have the three levels of government, and businesses and cultural
organisations themselves.
The broader futures that are crafted for the Sunshine Coast and
the Glamorgan Valleys will have to be 'core business' for both
universities, or their publics will become increasingly sceptical
about their roles and their worth in influencing their lives and
futures.
The days of unaccountable industry, unaccountable governments,
and unaccountable universities have long gone. Universities have a
moral obligation to contribute to the betterment of their
societies.
There was devastation in South Wales as industrialists left,
with no sense of obligation. Successive governments turned their
backs on the plight of the Valleys. Wales' coastal universities
concentrated on learnings that had little to do with real lives and
future societies, and some of them still languish after wallowing
in those traditions for so long and so exclusively.
Whilst universities should embrace many students with many study
motivations, the urgency of partnerships and engagement as 'core
business' of universities is imperative if the face of societal
change is to be responsibly managed.
Linking our universities will enable us to strengthen our
various engagement strategies, influence each others research, and
cooperate on projects of economic and cultural significance, as
well as generating 'benchmarks' to satisfy those scrutineers of our
progress.
Professor Paul Thomas is Vice-Chancellor of University of
the Sunshine Coast