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VC ’ S CORNER
Do you think the sector will be able to go back to what it was before , or do we need to evolve ? I think you ’ ve identified the biggest issue that ’ s on the agenda for universities and that I don ’ t think anyone can go back to what they were before . Sandra Harding , the former chair of UA and the former Vice Chancellor of James Cook University , used the sort of tale of two cities story to give some quotes about how foolish it would be to be able to expect to go back and how wise it would be to recognize that transformation and renewal is possible . I think we are at a point where everyone in the sector , leaders , staff , students , and all the partners of our institutions , need to have a future orientation and need to let go of the idea that we can go back to anything .
You also spoke with university leaders from New Zealand , Canada , US , and the UK . How did universities in these countries manage the pandemic compared to Australia ? I did a lot of traveling in the UK and the US in the period that the book was written . And I was delighted to talk to so many inspirational leaders from those parts of the world as well . I ’ m not sure that those as individual leaders coped better during the pandemic , but the context that they were operating in were quite different from those of the context of Australia . The UK for instance , opened its borders to international students and got students of domestic and an international nature back onto its campuses much earlier than we did . And the market changes for domestic and international student patterns I think became apparent earlier in those parts of the world for that reason . And responses to it have been swifter . I was just looking at some data this week of how the numbers of applicants of international students for UK at universities has sharply increased and makes us in Australia feel we ’ ve got a lot of catching up to do
International students are slowly coming back to Australia . How did the loss of international students impact the sector and are university doing enough to bring them back ? The impact has been obvious and clear in terms of the financial impact . There ’ s been lots of data produced about the amount of lost revenue from international students for the sector for individual universities . But it ’ s much more than that and it ’ s changed the dynamic and the culture , not only of universities but also have local economies and indirectly has also impacted the experiences of our domestic students . I mean , the beauty of a diverse student body of multiple cultures and multiple experiences in classroom situations and in social interactions around university campuses and in the suburbs that so many of our universities have been in has been what has been such a big draw card for getting people to come to Australia as international students . Once that dynamic and that balance got unsettled , it ’ s created a very different sort of environment and a different proposition for the future . I ’ d I think with domestic , maybe there ’ s too much hope of being able to go back to the past patterns of international student recruitment and not enough focus on finding new ways of delivering high quality Australian education to an international student market . And whether we ’ ll ever bring them back in the numbers that we did , or we ’ ll need to find new ways of going to them , I think is one of the biggest questions that universities are facing .
The book also explores how Covid has brought forward the need to focus on wellbeing . What are some of the strategies leaders put into place to improve their culture and staff retention ? This is a hugely important issue . In the short term , acute issues of student wellbeing and the rising levels of student mental health challenges and even staff mental health challenges because of the last three years are staring everybody in the face . So , there ’ s some emergency repair work , if you like , that needs to be done there . But you used the word culture , and I think this is the biggest issue that ’ s facing every university right now as we look to the medium term and probably the one that the sector is least well prepared for . One part of my book has Carolyn Evans , the Vice Chancellor of Griffith University . She talks very eloquently about the way that Griffith used its values about social justice and a strategy that ’ s culturally based around creating a better future for all as a true north to guide them in their decision of making through the pandemic .
In the long term , I think we need different ways of building capacity and capability , including thinking much more carefully in the future as a result of all of this , about who our leaders are and where
I don ’ t think anyone can go back to what they were before .
we find them , and that we need not just great academics to lead academic work , but we ’ ll need increasingly compassionate leaders who have business now , some connections that allow them to take people on journeys and build cultures to and label partnerships that will help move universities into the future in a more purposeful way .
After speaking with more than 50 university leaders , what surprised you the most ? One question I ’ ve been asked is who survived the pandemic best and who did best in these circumstances , and I don ’ t think it ’ s easy to answer that sort of question because it rather depends on how well you were prepared for it . So , the interview that I did with Dr David Kellerman , an engineering academic at UNSW , about how the range of staff in the sector coped with the challenge of going online in a fortnight . He talked about how he flourished and thrived in that situation because he ’ d been working on it for many years beforehand .
But there were lots of staff and lots of universities who made heroic efforts out of very poor states of preparation . And I don ’ t think we can blame them for that . I think we must recognize that different individuals were in different states of preparation . And by the same token , I think the thing that surprised me most in writing the book was my exposure to Torrens University of Australia . I had no idea that in eight years , it had grown as a university with less than 200 students to be a university with more than 20,000 students . A phenomenal rate of growth that continued during the pandemic when others were shrinking , and a rate of growth that had not inherited the legacy of the shape a nature of student body that a hundred year or a 50-year-old university starts with .
For me , the highlights of 222 pages and two years talking to the sectors leaders and writing a book with them about the agenda for the future were that being prepared was good , but having a blank slate was also good . And really there ’ s all sorts of opportunities for people that are going to look at the future in a new way and find new ways of doing things . ■
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