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VC’s corner
enacted to ensure appropriate oversight
of teaching, learning and assessment
changes in the provision of university
education occur in a very short timeframe.
This one might confound any current CIA
operatives in universities who are intent on
slowing us down.
Considerations of academic matters that
used to take one or two long academic
board discussions and a fair amount of
angst, not to mention tension and in some
cases ongoing resentments between
parties with different views, have given way
to short, focused considerations, often in
single, brief meetings of key people.
As far as I have observed to date at my
own university and elsewhere, we have
made sensible and defensible positions and
enacted them, with broad acceptance and
little or no negative ripple.
Of course, we have been forced to move
quickly by the COVID-19 crisis, which will
become the defining feature of most of the
world’s experience in 2020.
A ‘new normal’ is emerging in every
aspect of human existence for this period,
and it is understandable that we should
hope things to return to the ‘old normal’, at
least in some respects.
I’d argue that academic governance is
one area in which we should try to retain
the new normal, at least to some extent.
Imagine what might be possible if
university staff were freed up, even just a
little, from the at-times torturous dance
of academic consideration that uses up
precious talent, goodwill and time.
What if, after this terrible world crisis,
we emerged with a commitment to do
things differently in universities and in ways
that maintained integrity, but did not steal
our resources?
What if, instead of us doing as a CIA
operative would recommend – that is, “talk
as frequently as possible and at great length.
Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes
and accounts of personal experiences” –
we simply didn’t do that anymore?
What if we all became more conscious
of how much of other people’s time we use
up, perhaps unnecessarily, and committed
to stop doing that?
That we have moved over a million
university students to profoundly different
ways of learning, teaching and assessment
to the usual, and created new and efficient
ways to consider and govern effectively
with academic integrity apparently
intact, and all in a matter of a few short
weeks, tells us that anything is possible in
the sector.
When we emerge from COVID-19, the
world will be a different place, and human
contact will be more deeply appreciated in
many ways.
Why not try to respect that contact in
universities by not wasting each other’s
talent, goodwill and time anymore? ■
Professor Marcia Devlin is senior deputy
vice-chancellor at Victoria University
in Melbourne.
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