Batterbury, S.P.J. and J. Byrne. 2017. Australia: reclaiming the public university? In a special collection, W. Halffman and H. Radder (eds.) International responses to the Academic Manifesto: reports from 14 countries. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2017: 23-33. (ISSN 2471-9560) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Australia: Reclaiming the Public University?
2017
In a provocative article published in 'Minerva' in 2015, Halffman and Radder discuss the Kafkaesque worlds that academics in the Netherlands now find themselves in, as an underfunded university sector predates upon itself and its workforce (2015, p. 165-166). Their Academic Manifesto observes that Dutch tertiary institutions have become obsessively focused on ‘accountability’ and pursue neoliberal-style imperatives [forced upon them] of ‘efficiency and excellence’. They paint a portrait of academics under siege, untrusted, and constantly micro-managed. The pursuit of so-called efficiency has involved accountability systems that are themselves wasteful, driving seemingly endless institutional restructuring. Moreover, institutions have become obsessed with star-performers in research, driven by competitive targets that undergird global rankings. Metrics – publication outputs, journal quality, citations, impact and grant revenue – produce a culture of competition and sometimes,...
The Strategies of Australia’s Universities, 2020
Australia’s public universities are robust institutions that play a crucial role in strengthening the economic and social fabric of the country. They have a Grand Bargain with the state in which they are provided with base funding to educate students to participate in the growing knowledge economy. They also have a civic role to advance knowledge and understanding and to shape the debate on crucial issues like climate change. Because these roles require more money than is provided from government sources, the universities have adopted a commercial mindset. To guide this mindset, they each produce and publish an organisation-level strategy. We argue that these strategies are incomplete and often incoherent.
2018
Globally, universities are facing complex issues which often leads to transformational change. Among the changes, university governance and accountability management have been noted as areas of reform. The main drivers are globalisation, burgeoning knowledge-based economies, rapidity of new technologies adoption, and global competitiveness. The impact of these drivers and subsequent reform is ultimately reflected in the changing nature of academic work being undertaken by academic staff. Academic staff are inclined to negatively reflect on their experience of the changing nature of their academic work. This paper reports on a study conducted in Australia that explores the lived experiences of sixteen academics working in a range of public universities and experiencing transformational change. The study adopts a qualitative research approach to support inductive and open generation of new thinking to emerge from the data. The data collection method consists of in-depth, one-on-one, f...
2012
In the last few years, a scholarly critique of current forms and directions of higher education has become increasingly prominent. This work, often but not exclusively focussed on the American and British systems, and on humanities disciplines, laments the transformation of the university into ‘a fast-food outlet that sells only those ideas that its managers believe will sell [and] treats its employees as if they were too devious or stupid to be trusted’ (Parker and Jary 335). Topics include the proliferation of courses and subject areas seen as profitable, particularly for overseas students;1 the commensurate diminution or dissolution of ‘unprofitable’ areas; the de-professionalisation of academic staff and limitation of their powers in decisionmaking; the dismantling of academic disciplines and department-based academic units; the growing size and authority of management in determining priorities in research (see Laudel) and teaching; quantification and evaluation of academic work...
The rise and fall of Australian higher education There is no doubt that the Australian higher education system has grown dramatically in the last fifty years. Yet so much of this growth has not been primarily driven by the genuine educational aspirations of government leaders to grow a high quality university system. Instead, growth has primarily (though not exclusively) come from real political pressures to broaden access to a university education. Unfortunately all too often the need to address these political demands has led to educational pragmatism, centred on generating university places rather than genuinely building the capability of Australian universities. Now we are on the eve of a further dramatic transformation, again based on the logic of expanding university places. This transformation is driven by a radical model that is unashamedly based on ‘other people’s ideas’, amounting to the effective privatisation of Australian higher education. This paper will reflect on this broad history and will argue that this market-driven model will represent (another) failure of leadership in higher education.
Tensions in the Evolving Australian Higher Education System: A Complex, Evolving Mix
2020
The Australian university system, originally based on the Oxbridge model, has largely outgrown its British roots, and now confronts a very different context. A significant challenge stems from tensions between its history, with a rich indigenous heritage, and establishment as a series of British colonies; and its geography, at the heel of South East Asia, with all its major neighbours from East and Southeast Asia. Reflecting the growing trend of greater engagement with Asia, and greater migration from the region, Asian academics now form a significant proportion of academic staff, but it is argued that while their disciplinary expertise is recognized, their additional cultural and linguistic skills are often not acknowledged, and their Asian cultural capital undervalued. A trend towards greater managerialism and increasingly intricate and burdensome regulatory architecture, is traced and critiqued, in relation to governance, at both system and institutional levels. The distinctive m...
Organisational culture of Australian universities: Community or corporate?
Can universities in the 21 st century be more like scholarly communities than corporations? st century be more like scholarly communities than corporations? st When the Australian government urges universities to be more entrepreneurial and competitive, it is hard to imagine that they can return to the collegial institutions that they once purported to be. Th e university as a community of scholars survives in some countries; however, it is being replaced by the university as corporation in many others, especially Anglo-American ones. Despite the move to a 'new world order' that embraces the free market, there is resistance to privatisation in many European universities. Why have they resisted and Anglo-American universities embraced privatisation? Th is address will analyse how privatisation alters the organisational cultures of universities and examine some of the ethical issues that universities have to confront as they pursue teaching and research for profi ts. Commercialisation of research, for example, can threaten the notion of the university as an institution working for the 'public good' of the nation. When universities turn to corporations to sponsor research or to collaborate with them on research projects, what evidence is there that bias creeps into the research fi ndings? Protecting academic freedom and the independence of research is fundamental to the integrity of universities and their ability to fulfi l their public interest function. When universities become reliant on the fi nancial gain that comes with attracting overseas students to their universities, this profi t motive may begin to threaten the academic quality of universities. Recruiting international students may have advantages as well as disadvantages for institutions. Australian universities could be lauded as benefi ting the country by increasing diversity and giving Australian universities a global image. However, there are reports on Australian campuses that tell a diff erent story. Australian students may not gain greater tolerance from studying with international students. For example, Australian students may feel that international students are taking places that should be going to domestic students. Academics are concerned that critical education is declining as vocational disciplines are more favoured by international students and thus this distorts the choices for study in our universities. Th e enviable reputation that Australian universities currently have in providing a high quality education may be threatened by the lack of adequate public funding. Th is has already led to declining staff /student ratios and imbalances in our institutions because universities have had to seek profi ts from their teaching and research. Has the global trend towards privatisation gone too far in the case of Australian universities?
Studies in Higher Education, 1998
A survey of the perceptions of academic staff from three representative universities to recent higher education reform in Australia has revealed a high level of concern in many areas of academic responsibility and a dismal assessment of future prospects. This article reports responses to issues involving the mainstream activities of teaching and research as well as to the standard of undergraduate students and the extent of academic freedom. The quality of new students, of teaching and research are all identified as in decline. Changes in university management to a more corporate style are seen as a threat to academic freedom. Established research universities are concerned that scarce research funds are being stretched too far. This perception is leading to new divisions in the unified higher education sector.
The rise and fall of Australian higher education.
Proceedings of the 2014 ISAA Conference, The Lucky Country? Canberra (October 2014), 2015
There is no doubt that the Australian higher education system has grown dramatically in the last fifty years. Yet so much of this growth has not been primarily driven by the genuine educational aspirations of government leaders to grow a high quality university system. Instead, growth has primarily (though not exclusively) come from real political pressures to broaden access to a university education. Unfortunately all too often the need to address these political demands has led to educational pragmatism, centred on generating university places rather than genuinely building the capability of Australian universities. Now we are on the eve of a further dramatic transformation, again based on the logic of expanding university places. This transformation is driven by a radical model that is unashamedly based on ‘other people’s ideas’, amounting to the effective privatisation of Australian higher education. This paper will reflect on this broad history and will argue that this market-driven model will represent (another) failure of leadership in higher education.