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The contradictory nature of Australia’s neoliberal university
system also encourages federal policy to force universities “to
compete against each other for funding, both public and private”.
“The result is gratuitous waste,” Kunkler says.
“Million-dollar marketing and promotion budgets go hand
in hand with a millionaire executive class whose managerial
techniques are transplanted from the private sector.
“This is cited to justify bonus pay and obscene travel expenses.
In this sense, the current pandemic is not the culprit, but a catalyst
accelerating contradictions implanted in the tertiary sector four
decades ago.”
NEOLIBERAL HEGEMONY
The Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) introduced in
1991 by the Hawke Labor government was another step towards
“legitimising neoliberalism” within the university sphere, Kunkler
argues. The scheme allowed students to repay their HECS loan
once they graduated, entered the workforce, and their salary had
reached a certain threshold.
But according to Kunkler, the real motive for HECS was to
conceal the defunding of universities. The states, however, took a
different view, “with the state still able to claim that it was making its
‘contribution’”.
“By stealth, the universal right to an education was eroded,”
Kunkler says. “The idea of equal access was replaced by that of
equitable contribution between public funding and private fees.
This was a historic about-face for Labor: it was Gough Whitlam
who had abolished tuition fees in 1974.”
Since the rise of John Howard to prime minister in 1996, Kunkler
contends that successive Liberal governments have “exploited”
Labor’s original policy framework.
“Their goal was total fee deregulation and privatisation,” he says.
“While that final outcome was fended off, the system that
resulted belies any claim to fairness.
“As universities have grown rich on private endowments and
international fees, participation rates among working-class
Australians have failed to rise.”
One of the most poignant aspects of Kunkler’s article is the
sheer number of casual tutors and research assistants that have
lost their jobs due to the economic downturn.
“Staff and students have borne the brunt of these changes.
Today, the higher education sector is at the vanguard of
casualisation in Australia,” he says.
“Seven in 10 university staff are insecurely employed, and a
reserve army of intellectual labour has been bolstered by the
dependence on ‘permanent casuals’ — a mass of insecurely
employed, improperly paid sessional staff who generate vast profits
for institutions hostile to academic freedom — all on the promise of
a permanent job that never comes.”
Kunkler is also concerned with how “perverse metrics” —
quantitative measures of research output intended to calculate
intellectual worth — have been standardised and have brought
only degradation. The education market, he says, was supposed to
espouse freedom and expel elitists.
“The animal spirits released upon stolid course offerings
homogenised and banalised content,” he adds.
Kunkler also asserts that today’s university managers measure
success by the “disruptiveness of vision change” – a code for mass
redundancies, he argues.
SO, WHERE TO FROM HERE?
While Kunkler argues that the severe threat to Australian universities
preceded COVID-19, he warns that this current crisis requires
radical steps to be taken.
“We cannot rely on the executives responsible for the system to
save it, so in thrall are they to the neoliberalism they have ushered
in,” he says.
“Reform can only be led by university workers (alongside
students), who know the pain neoliberalism has ushered in
and who are motivated to replace market autocracy with
self-governance.
“This means not only more short-term economic fixes
that we can demand now, but also a longer-term strategy for
transformation: a new, democratic vision for tertiary education
more broadly.”
As Kunkler points out, the Commonwealth Grant Scheme
system subsidises tuition for some courses, but the grant scheme
applies to neither higher degrees nor international students. He is
Unchecked, neoliberalism will be the death
of Australian universities — but public funding and
democratic control may save them.
now calling for the grant scheme to cover all enrolments for the
entirety of a student’s course.
Presently, only 34 per cent of university research is funded
by the federal government, with other financing coming from
international and private sources. These can include gifts, bequests
and private sponsorship arrangements with corporate interests.
In some cases, this has threatened to undermine research
independence: health supplement companies Swisse and
Blackmores, for instance, donated to sponsor research into
alternative medicine and nutritional supplements at La Trobe
University and the University of Sydney, respectively.
In the medium term, heaving executive staffs and HR
departments must downsize and be reimagined, Kunkler says.
Those managers who have been deemed necessary should have
a similar salary to their staff, he argues.
Stories of vice‐chancellors clinging to enormous pay packets
that could employ a host of innovative, efficient minds have not
gone down well in public opinion.
A NEW WAY FORWARD
So, what is Kunkler’s plan to regain our most democratic
institutions?
“University assemblies representing all staff groups —
professional and academic, casual, fixed-term, and permanent
staff — as well as representatives from student groups could lead
this democratic revolution,” Kunkler says.
“Although it sounds utopian, the idea was developed by the
radical student movements of the 1970s. The university assembly
at Melbourne University lasted from 1974 until it was finally claimed
by neoliberalism in 1989.
“Unchecked, neoliberalism will be the death of Australian
universities — but public funding and democratic control may
save them.” ■
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