policy & reform
Sometime this year Australians will elect the next federal government.
If history proves a guide, higher education will not feature in the campaign. Nearly a million Australians study at a university, more than 100,000 work in the sector and in many towns, cities and states, tertiary education is now the leading employer.
Education is Australia’ s fourth largest export, and Victoria’ s largest. Still, the campaign will be silent.
In 2010, neither major party released a policy on higher education until the final days of the campaign. There was no serious attention – debates, advertisements or lobbying campaigns around the future of universities.
Why? In part because the nation has solved some major challenges. The wide distribution of campuses and the demanddriven system create access for those Australians who wish to study.
The logic of HECS tempers concern over crushing graduate debt. Recent successes in global rankings assure Australians they own a strong and well-performing higher education system.
The stresses and strains of the system appear technical and arcane. Regulatory reform, more diverse student pathways, greater choice of curriculum and delivery mode – these are matters for insiders, not the stuff of an election campaign.
And yet the university sector needs a voice in the grand argument about national priorities.
It is imperative the electorate, and their political leaders, understand the contribution universities should make to the national future. From economic innovation to quality of healthcare, from jobs for the next generation to insight about ourselves as a polity, universities have much to offer.
There is substantial policy thinking required on completing the demand driven system. The links to sub-bachelor programs, and the connections between vocational and higher education, remain works in progress. Also unresolved is the role of postgraduate education across the sector, with the demand-driven system focused principally on bachelor qualifications.
Equity remains a challenge, despite enormous efforts across the sector. Educational disadvantage shows in preschool tests, and is confirmed by the diagnostic tools now implemented across Australia. Universities are keen to be partners in addressing equity, but cannot do the work alone.
After several years of exciting and welcome growth in research funding, recent budget decisions have reversed some long-awaited policy gains. Australian research expenditure has improved, but remains modest by the standards of our regional competitors.
Australian higher education is now firmly part of a global economy, so issues such as visas, support for international students, and maintenance of minimum standards are all pressing policy concerns.
And funding is always a topic in any discussion of higher education. The most recent expert report identified significant shortfalls in funding per student across a wide array of disciplines, but it is unclear whether either party will address the issue.
All of this should be viewed in the light of important national priorities. The Australia in the Asian Century white paper invites universities to deepen their engagement with Asia.
Higher education, like other services, is shaped by the Australian preference for low taxes and modest public provision. As a result, we invest less in universities than other nations in the region.
The roll-out of the national broadband network, and the sudden focus on online learning, provides scope to expand curriculum offerings and reach people who need or prefer to study away from campus. A more networked nation offers great opportunity too for community learning, for non-accredited training and for conversation about ideas.
Pressing public debates around climate adaptation benefit from research and expert opinion – no matter how difficult it can be to communicate the basis and findings of science.
And higher education, like other services, is shaped by the Australian preference for low taxes and modest public provision. As a result, we invest less in universities than other nations in the region.
This is never debated, but there are consequences. Success as an international student hub relies in large part on perceptions of quality. As greater resources see universities in Singapore, Korea and Hong Kong eclipse their Australian counterparts, so competitiveness in the nation’ s largest service export industry is under challenge.
Yet as things stand, universities will not become the centre of political debate. No perceived crisis drives public attention toward tertiary issues. Opinion polls suggest Australians overall are very satisfied with their tertiary system, and more concerned with employment, school education, healthcare access and the environment.
Yet there are costs in being invisible, as the sector knows from bitter experience. The end of indexation in 1995, the major teaching cuts of 1996, and the loss of future research funding during 2012 attracted little public notice, and no outcry.
There is little evidence of wider concern about the long slow decline in staff-student ratios, from 1:15 to more than 1:20.
So the sector faces a challenge in this election year. We need the electorate, and their political leaders, to understand the contribution universities make.
When senior figures from universities speak in public about the state of higher education in Australia, there is much temptation to reel off the many things wrong with the system: insufficient funding of research and the cost of teaching, insecure employment for casual staff, and often outdated facilities with crowded classrooms.
All are important. Yet rarely does anyone also champion the benefits generated by Australian universities, the way education enriches lives. People take us at our own estimation – if the sector won’ t speak in support of our own work, why should politicians?
Universities and their supporters can do a better job explaining what happens on campus, helping Australians understand what is worth celebrating, and why additional investment can benefit everyone in the community – our students first, but the many others who benefit from research and engagement.
The connections might not be obvious or direct, but they deserve attention. Until we take seriously the work of engaging with a broader public, with frankness but justifiable pride, our sector will remain of little political relevance.
This is the ambitious goal Universities Australia has set itself for the year ahead. Without taking sides in a political contest the sector must set out its policy aims, and promote these through the year ahead. ■
Professor Glyn Davis is chair of Universities Australia and vice-chancellor of Melbourne University.
www. campusreview. com. au February 2013 | 23