Peak University Body Challenged
8 October 2005
The broad sweep of change that is occurring in the sector is now
not only influenced from without, led by the Commonwealth
Government, but, with the recent Group of Eight (Go8) letter to the
Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC), it seems that change
will also be created from within.
Over recent years, as the traumatic and rapid reform process has
been advanced, the tensions and competitions between the
thirty-eight universities of the AVCC have become more evident.
Whilst the Vice-Chancellors have agreed on some issues, the number
on which they have disagreed is increasing.
The Go8, that is, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland,
Australian National, New South Wales, Western Australia and Monash,
have proposed that the AVCC be restructured with a full-time
President, with a reduced Secretariat, and bearing in mind that the
issues on which it can speak with one voice, are 'narrower than
ever', that it should be a 'commonwealth' of interests rather than
the 'peak national representative body'.
The 'commonwealth' would be comprised of various groups of
universities, like the Go8, Innovative Research Universities,
Technology Network, or New Generation Universities.
The rationale is that different university groupings have
different interests and will sometimes need to pursue their own
group or individual agenda rather than attempting consensus or
collective action.
The Go8, of course, are in the throes of influencing the
National Agenda and accessing the lion's share of public funds for
research, in particular. Their status, large scale, strong revenue
flows, huge alumni support, marketing budgets, donations bequests
and scholarships, not to mention their increasingly sophisticated
lobbying and recent group strategy meeting in Berlin, suggest that
they will be successful. They are understandably attempting to
climb or enter world-class rankings.
The national interest, however, requires a broader set of
considerations about higher education provision, particularly in
the country's regions.
Some of the fastest growing regions of Victoria or New South
Wales in the 1950s led to the establishment of universities that,
on the back of that growth, accompanied by governments' support,
have now become members of the elite Go8 club, namely Monash and
UNSW.
It would be regarded as unfair by many Australians, I suspect,
if the powerful universities became so successful in lobbying for
funds that it denied or diminished the level of support for today's
high growth areas from which tomorrow's elite universities might
emerge.
Interestingly, too, is that the largest overall number of
university students, the most socially disadvantaged, the most
disabled, the most mature, the most women, the most multicultural,
are in fact in universities outside the elite group. Are these
students ultimately to have support for them diminished in the
national higher education system?
Whilst there is no doubt that different universities have
different missions, the movement to a 'commonwealth' or federated
system needs to be handled with great care or there may be winners
or losers, not on merit or promise or need, but on prestige,
lobbying and dollar might.
USC is currently in the 'New Generation' group, but is itself
unique in that group, not having developed from a previous college
of advanced education during the Dawkins reforms, but was created
to operate as a University from the outset, much like the
'Innovative Universities' group in the 1960s and 1970s.
Professor Paul Thomas is Vice-Chancellor of University of
the Sunshine Coast