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Diverse views at national conference
7 April 2007
A ‘Higher Education Summit’ I attended in Melbourne this week, and which involved a large number of national leaders, provoked a great deal of debate about the future of universities.
The Federal Minister, Julie Bishop and Shadow Minister Stephen Smith, both spoke, and agreed on the importance of themes like access, quality, and diversity, but their ways of pursuing those themes were quite divergent. The Minister has added ‘governance’ to her list of priorities and elaborated examples of poor governance that were causing her concern.
Her solution to poor governance is to signal that University Councils should be reduced to a maximum of fourteen members, and the period of office of councillors shortened.
There seemed to many of us that there are so many more examples of good governance across a sector that has seen major transformation and growth across the last decade, that more governance rearrangements could be a relatively lower priority.
From Vice-Chancellor presentations at the conference, we got the full spectrum of diverse ideas, reflecting either their own university or their own discipline background.
Melbourne’s theme was, surprisingly, access and equity, at a period when they are reorganising their undergraduate program. A dual-sector (Uni and TAFE) Vice-Chancellor was proposing TAFE run Associate Degrees for ‘marginal’ students, rather than universities admit them. Another Vice-Chancellor, an economist, criticised the state of sectoral funding - a Harvard student attracts A$109,000 per annum, a NSW private school student up to A$22,000, yet on average Australian universities get only around A$13,000 per student. That Vice-Chancellor argued for an open fee-paying environment. It was the most contentious and critical paper of the conference in highlighting university under-funding.
Without sounding complacent, I do not see at USC the kinds of governance problems that are evidenced elsewhere. Also, because of our strong growth we are flexible and innovative. In addition, we have always had to work with fewer resources, and have avoided the major liabilities accrued elsewhere. Our greatest problems here, relate to securing infrastructure and research monies to support our student and regional interests. In an election year it will be interesting to gauge which political party will offer greatest benefits to USC for us to develop our distinctive mission.
Professor Paul Thomas AM is Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Sunshine Coast.