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Narrow focus
Do universities strive for a comparative advantage ?
By Anand Kulkarni
It is well established that like other entities , universities are in the business of identifying and developing competitive advantages in the marketplace for students and knowledge , based on capability , location , tradition and technology . Global rankings , although criticised , do provide some insight into competitive positioning of universities .
This article uses the economist notion and formulation of Revealed Comparative Advantage ( RCA ) in trade ( exports ), applied to student load ( total domestic and international ). RCA in the traditional reckoning measures “ disproportionateness ” of exporting activity , that is the extent to which a country ’ s exports of a commodity in its total export mix is higher than the global share of exports of that same commodity in total global exports .
We have re-configured this approach and instead of commodities we use load by broad field of education . RCA thus shows the extent to which load in a particular broad field of education is disproportionally represented in the load mix of an institution compared to the sector as a whole . A value greater than 1 for an institution ’ s load by field of education is considered to be representative of a comparative advantage . The analysis was undertaken for all Table A Australian higher education providers , and for all 12 broad fields of education , data for which was provided by the Commonwealth
Department of Education for 2019 . It should be noted that this is not a quality measure but a volume one .
The key points from our analysis are that when looked at by broad field , 25 out of 39 institutions have a Revealed Comparative Advantage in Education , 22 in Health , 22 in Information Technology ( IT ), 21 in Natural and Physical Sciences , 18 in Management and Commerce , 18 in Society and Culture . Architecture and Building and Agriculture , Environment and Related follow with 17 and 15 respectively .
Nonetheless , what is clear is that most Australian institutions have a similar load profile and advantage , suggesting lack of real diversity in the system .
While factors such as student preference and perceived job potential are likely determinants , it is also possible that the system limits choice in the aggregate . What is also interesting is that only 13 Institutions out of 39 have an RCA greater than 1 for Engineering and Related Technologies , which one could normally assume is a corollary of Natural and Physical Sciences and even IT , yet does not seem to be the case . It appears that Engineering does not figure as heavily in the load deliberations of institutions as other fields .
Thirteen institutions have an RCA greater than 1 for Creative Arts while only 6 higher education providers have an advantage in Food , Hospitality and Personal Services , indicating some clear specialisation in this field .
We also considered changes in RCA between 2014 and 2019 . This reveals that more institutions have disproportionately higher load in Health , Natural and Physical
Sciences , IT and Architecture and Building in 2019 compared to 2014 . On the contrary , fewer institutions were found to display this tendency in Engineering and Related Technologies , Management and Commerce , Society and Culture , Creative Arts , Food , Hospitality and Personal Services and Agriculture , Environment and Related in 2019 compared to 2014 . Over time , the focus of load by institution and broad field of education has been narrowing .
Returning to 2019 data we classify institutions according to the following categories : generalist ; semi-specialist ; and specialist . Generalist are those institutions which have an RCA greater than 1 for more than half of the fields of education ; semispecialist are those which have RCA of greater than 1 in 3-5 fields ; and specialised are those which have RCA greater than 1 for 1-2 fields .
Using this configuration , we identified 11 generalist institutions . Monash , Griffith and University of Tasmania led the field with comparative advantage in 7 out of the 11 broad fields of education . Apart from sheer size in the case of Monash , which accounts for greater number of fields , in the case of the other two , specific spatial factors appear to be at work . For example , in essence University of Tasmania needs to cater to the whole of the state .
There are 26 institutions that we describe as semi-specialist , accounting for the bulk of the Table A providers . Finally , there are only two institutions that conform to what we describe as specialised : these are ACU ( which has two fields of revealed comparative advantage ), and Bachelor of Indigenous Tertiary Education .
We also labelled those institutions with RCA between 0.7 and 1.00 by field of education as partial advantage . On this score , we find that nearly all institutions have at least one broad field of education in this range , and most have 2 to 3 .
As the data pertains to 2019 , clearly the impact of COVID-19 is yet to be fully felt for comparative purposes . However , one could anticipate further narrowing of the focus on the part of institutions aligned to the most profitable domestic segments . This may also open the door for new funding possibilities that foster cross university offerings to promote “ diverse specialisations ”. ■
Dr Anand Kulkarni is a higher education professional at Victoria University . This article represents the author ’ s views entirely .
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